


Into the Dark Stream

by lbmisscharlie



Series: Dark Stream [1]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, Guerrilla Warfare, Imperialism, Internalized Homophobia, Irish history, M/M, Minor Character Death, Period-Typical Homophobia, War, Wartime Violence, complicated identity issues, this is not a happy story
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-09
Updated: 2015-03-31
Packaged: 2018-02-08 01:46:20
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 26
Words: 119,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1922079
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lbmisscharlie/pseuds/lbmisscharlie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Ireland, 1920.</i> There's a war on, but no one seems to be playing by the rules. John Watson, injured and unemployed after his time at the Front, joins up with the special forces sent over to keep the peace, but when he meets Sherlock Holmes, the second son of the local lord, he begins to lose track of which side he is on.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The Great War

**Author's Note:**

> Eternal thanks and affection to my beta, sounding board, and constant cheerleader, [peninsulam](http://archiveofourown.org/users/peninsulam), and to my ever-patient Irish-checker, [reckonedrightly](http://archiveofourown.org/users/reckonedrightly).
> 
> Also thanks to the folks in Antidiogenes, who have seen bits and bobs of this over the two years it's been in the making, and have been ever supportive.
> 
> Title is from Eva Gore-Booth's poem ["Comrades"](http://lbmisscharlie.tumblr.com/post/91195020941/men-who-are-born-to-die-whose-dreams-are-soiled)
> 
>  
> 
> _We who have followed the same star and fought for the same dream,_  
>  _Are bound together for ever by the wild deed's bond and power._  
>  _Behold we have cast our nets into the same dark stream,_  
>  _We have climbed the same sheer cliff to seek the same blue flower._
> 
>  
> 
>  **A short note of warning:** This story, as a whole, will contain graphic depictions of violence and death in the context of wartime, some of which will be outside of the realm of generally accepted wartime tactics and some of which will involve young adults and older children both combatant and non-combatant. I'll try to give a heads-up on individual chapters, but if you have any concerns about specific content before reading, please do feel free to get in touch with me in the comments or privately ([tumblr](http://lbmisscharlie.tumblr.com/ask) or [email](mailto:lbmisscharlie@gmail.com)) and I will do my best to answer!
> 
> This fic will update every week on Tuesdays.

_April 1916_  
 _The Western Front_

The news comes in a rare lull in shooting. Meriting no official announcement, it spreads through the trenches like fire and hearsay. _Battle on the streets of Dublin. Hundreds killed. Rebels surrendered._ With blood and faeces and vomit and death heavy in the air they breathe, it’s hard to imagine a place without gunfire. The cities of the empire under siege? Isn’t the whole world?

“Fucking Irish,” the lads say. “Acting like it’s nought to do with them, with good men shedding blood for the empire.” 

“It’s their land, too, don’t they bloody know it?” John’s shoulders ache and all he can smell is the putrefaction of British bodies on foreign soil. People have been dying for two long bloody years, and he sees little sense in creating an enemy in the barracks beside you, but others feel differently.

John can’t intercede when some of the lads grab O’Donnell, grab him and strip him and tie him to a support beam around the back of the mud-walled hovel they call HQ. Can’t, or won’t – he tastes salt-bitter in the back of his throat and starts forward, but his sister’s voice pounds in his head – _don’t Johnny, don’t, it makes it worse, them thinking you’re weak and all_ – and his feet fall, heavy and sticking in the wetness of the trench.

 _Just a bit of a laugh, a lark, that’s all,_ bile rising in his mouth and his fists clenched too tight as O’Donnell kicks and fights and is pinned down. Five men, five brave soldiers, five mouths spitting and five pairs of boots aiming sharp kicks. 

“Fucking Paddy coward.” O’Donnell’s hands, red. His chest mottled purple – the cold and the bruising mired. Five against one – _two,_ John’s mind supplies, _could be two_ – and O’Donnell is the coward? He steps forward, feet light in the squelching wet mud, and calls, and five heads turn to him; O’Donnell’s lolls heaven-wards, like he isn’t in his body. 

“The Hun does enough to get us killed,” John says, forced conviviality, “I’m sure you don’t need to help him.” They look between John and O’Donnell, back to John again, and there is a bit of shame vying with the heat in their blood, their eyes diverting from him. 

The sound of footsteps around the corner finally sends them off, not John’s presence, unimposing as it is, and they leave, the last shoving him none-too-gently with a shoulder as he passes through the narrow alley; John’s hands fumble on the ropes, stiff in the cold air. O’Donnell doesn’t look at him. John’s throat burns, hot and raw. He pushes John’s hands away once the rope falls and leans to gather his clothes. The grimace, involuntary, is quashed quickly, and he turns his back and leaves.

After that, the fighting starts up again and there’s no time to remember that the many reaches of the empire don’t fight as one. News comes through of the executions – Pearse, a poet, Plunkett, a newlywed, Connolly, already on the brink of death. “No less than they deserve,” the lads say, and go back to firing.

It passes by like a dream, a dream where even the blood flows mud-grey and sluggish, a dream where John’s gun lives in his hand like a part of himself, his stomach always hollow and his feet always wet and his mind always, always, gloriously alive.

In the dank tunnels that serve, barely, as barracks, they sleep fitfully, bunks pressed together, shoulder to foot. At night, the walls swallow screams, and John wakes with dirt in his mouth as the very earth shakes and shudders. 

There’s dice, though, and cards, and they have little enough money to bet but it passes the time. John’s never played, his father’s sermonising and threats not worth the petty entertainment, but finds his hand quite deft at both. “If I’d your luck, Johnny Watson, I’d play the horses,” Murray says, at his shoulder as John sweeps another hand.

“What horses?” he says, and laughs, for they’ve no cavalry, the only horses at their outpost nags to draw the ambulance and the supply cart. 

“Well,” says Murray, slapping his knee, “I suppose we could bet on which bag of bones will keel over next.”

John shakes his head, picking up his cards and glancing at his hand. “You’re too soft-hearted for that, Murray.”

Murray screws up his face, indignant for a moment, before sighing. “Aye, I suppose.”

Smiling, John bumps Murray’s shoulder with his own. “Now, are you going to watch or not?” He’s soundly beaten Murray at every hand they’ve played, and he’s determined to teach the man to hold his own.

Back in the barracks, they bunk down for the night next to each other. John never sleeps during the nightly bombings, and Murray’s taken to talking to him through the night. John hasn’t told him that it’s not necessary, that he doesn’t much mind the raids. Not like the heavy artillery or the infantry advances, with men blown to pieces in their very steps.

So John knows well about Ada, Murray’s sweetheart, who, to hear him tell, is the kindest, prettiest, most warm-hearted girl in all of Dartford, and Murray’s family, whose long letters bring them frequent updates on life back at home.

He doesn’t offer up details of his own family, and it’s just as well Murray’s too kind to be curious. His parents, dead, and good riddance, and he hasn’t spoken to Harry in six years, he recalls guiltily. One day, Murray’s mum writes of how blessed she is to know her son’s out there, fighting, and still alive, and John’s chest tightens. He pens a few lines to Harry the next evening, sending them off to her last known address, but doesn’t expect a reply.

He makes it through the Somme and then Passchendaele and then Lys, through his friends’ blood on his hands and his own in his eyes, and it’s not like he thought war would be. Though they say this is the war to end all wars, so perhaps it’s not like wars are meant to be at all. Sometimes supplies are short and he thinks the pain in his stomach will kill him before the Germans do, and sometimes they march until his feet peel and bleed, and sometimes they don’t go anywhere for months, small skirmishes achieving no gains in ground. It seems the rest of their short, brutish lives will be carried out knee-deep in grimy mud, shovelling the trenches out and restacking sandbags.

Harry does write back — she’s in Liverpool now, not London, and the letter’s arrival was delayed for months — and it’s short, succinct, but it ends with love, and John wonders if he has family left, after all. 

++

_1918_  
 _London_

In June he’s given leave, a week only, and goes to London. It’s not as he remembers it, from those few short months between leaving home and signing up. It’s less glittering, the people he passes more care-worn and dark-eyed, and John’s boots click on the cobbles. 

He sees Harry, who comes down for a half day from Liverpool. He almost hadn’t sent her notice of his leave; their letters remain impersonal and infrequent, but when she draws him to her chest and fists her hands in his jacket, he’s nearly glad he did. Then she pulls away and slaps his face.

“God,” she says, “you stupid boy.”

“Jesus, Harry.” He rubs his cheek, pulls her into an alcove off the main street. “What are you doing?”

“I ought to kill you,” she says, colour high in her cheeks, “I just want to — oh, strangle you, you idiot.”

“What are you on about?” She smacks him again, this time in the arm. “Bloody hell — Harry, really.”

She drops her hands finally, shaking her head, and looks away. “You didn’t — you signed up, and you didn’t tell me. And I didn’t — you know I didn’t know until that first letter.”

“That’s what this is about? Harry, that was four years ago. Jesus.”

She smacks him again, cuffing his ear. “This is four years coming, then. I ought to kill you myself.”

“The Germans are doing a fine job trying,” John says, dryly, and her face screws up a bit. “Harry, I don’t —” She shrugs off his hand at her shoulder, shaking her head.

“And if they do?” she says, harshly. “When it started, I thought, he’s just sixteen, he’ll be safe, it’ll blow over before he’s even of age. And then you — you didn’t let that stop you, you damn foolhardy idiot.” Her voice cracks on the last word and John looks down, shamed.

“I hadn’t seen you in two years. I didn’t think you — cared, anymore.”

“Of course I — you know I couldn’t stay.” She doesn’t say any more, but John well remembers his father’s hand, and belt, and stick, and his voice raised, vibrating through the walls, and Harry, silent. 

“I know,” John says, and meets her eye. He touches her elbow, briefly. “Come on, let’s go.”

“There’s a fine tea shop two streets up,” Harry says, wiping her eyes discreetly. “Their cakes are — divine. Or, they were, before —” She smiles, tightly, and takes his arm.

They get tea and cakes, which are quite nice, actually, though a bit small, and sit at a table in the corner. Other patrons nod to John as they take their seats, and he flushes with each gesture. “My war hero brother,” Harry says, and John says, “I’m not.”

“I know you,” Harry murmurs. “You are — you can’t not be — you’re so. Good.” John shakes his head.

“I’m not — I’m not the boy you knew.”

She smiles sadly at him, looks down at their hands, motionless on the table. “You are, though. Just — grown up. You’re a protector, and now you’re off, fighting for —” she gestures, encompassing the cafe. “Us.” There’s a tightness to her voice that she doesn’t quite let free, but John can read the tension. Harry’s never had time for heroics — has never had the privilege of being able to worry about saving anyone other than herself. She could barely do that, John thinks, remembering his father’s tread, heavy on the stairs, and her door creaking open. John hadn’t been any help, not until — he shakes his head, clearing the memories.

“I didn’t —” John says, and Harry talks over him, “It wasn’t your —” They both stop.

“He’s dead, Harry,” John reminds her, in an undertone. 

She blinks at him, rapidly, eyes turning wet. “I know,” she says. “Thank you.”

“I didn’t —” John looks round them, rapidly, but all other occupants of the teahouse are engaged in their own business. “I didn’t have anything to do with it,” he whispers, harshly. 

Harry smiles, a wry twist of the lip. “I know.” John feels a flush of shame rush over him, and his teacup clatters as he places it back in the saucer. A women at the next table glances at him, and he smiles, tightly. 

“Don’t —” he starts and she shakes her head.

“I won’t,” she says, and looks down at her plate. Her teacake has been worried to crumbs.

He stands, desperately needing to be far, far away from tiny china teacups and buttoned-up matrons saluting him. His chair clatters a bit as he rushes to the door, and Harry follows, and neither make excuses, despite their disruptive exit. They walk in silence until reaching the Underground station. At the top of the stairs, Harry turns to him, and clasps his shoulders, and kisses both cheeks. 

“Stay alive,” she says, and he nods, tightly, and she bites her lip, and squeezes his shoulders, and turns to go down the stairs.

He bids London goodbye to return to Belgium, and thinks he’d rather like to return, someday, and make it his home properly.

++

The front is much the same, and Murray welcomes him back with a slap to his shoulder and a finger of piss-poor whiskey. There are rumblings of a plan, a push to take advantage of the German’s increasingly weak front defences, but in the meantime it’s more of the same. Guns in the daylight, bombs at night, cards when it’s quiet, fighting when it’s not, and John wonders if his world will stay narrow trenches and blood-soaked mud and ringing in his ears forever.

Then, though, the push begins, thousands strong in a concerted effort to attack Germany’s front lines. The Grand Offencive, and wasn’t it just: Belgians, French, Americans, Englishmen, six miles in a day, then the next, then the next, fighting on empty stomachs but still fighting, still pushing. With each new rush, Murray is at his right side, and when the news comes on the second day that it’s working, that the German lines are breaking down, Murray whoops and pulls John into a hug, and they bed down that night with their blood singing.

They start again at daybreak, guns cleaned and bodies running on little more than adrenaline. They run through mud, boots sticking, squelching, and across the field they see not an unbroken line of troops, but chaos as groups of soldiers break off and run. John turns to grin at Murray, who smiles back, fist shot in the air triumphantly, when the world goes red and Murray falls.

John stumbles to his feet, then falls again. His ears ring and he can’t clearly see his hands in front of him; all is blurred and shifting. He drags himself back to where Murray must be — must be! — until he feels warmth. He blinks and blinks until below him he sees Murray’s face and his own hands, red and liquid, and pressing down, and he’s saying something but he doesn’t know what, and then all goes white, then black.

++

_Winter 1918_  
 _London_

He remembers this: muscles mangled and bones shattered and gangrenous dreams where the fog is of too much pain and not enough morphia, and when he wakes the war’s over. Armistice has happened without him; he’s unnecessary to the war effort in the end, it seems. He returns to England on a canvas cot on a boat full of men far more damaged and far less whole than he, and around him the air is too quiet, filled as it is with the soft sobs of too-young boys returning with minds broken and eyes unseeing.

No one can — or will — tell him about his injury, and his lip is chewed raw from the pain, which comes from — everywhere. He wonders if, once the ship lands, he’ll be sent home, wherever that is, with a bandage and a prayer. Instead, he’s transfered to Queen Alexandria Military Hospital and sent to surgery by grim-faced doctors. 

After that, hours, days, are indistinguishable, until one day he wakes with clarity to the bobbing face of a red-haired nurse. She grins brightly and the sun shining behind her head sets her neat white cap glowing. His leg screams with pain under blueing-white sheets but when he asks to see the wound, the nurse shakes her head firmly. She comes by the next day, arms full of bandages, but when he tries to move the sheets away she stills his hands and frowns.

She unwinds sickly-stained gauze from his shoulder and suddenly it hurts too – searing pain right down to shattered scapula. She doesn’t touch his leg and when she’s gone he feels it, hands searching for torn, ragged edges, for blood and scars that aren’t there. 

Around him, boys cry out delusions awake and asleep. No one looks them in the eye. _Cowardice,_ had been the whisper, but the war’s over, so what’s there to be afraid of? The horrors they shriek haunt John too: sometimes the ward, bleached and scrubbed, seems splashed with the blood of his friends. 

One night, it’s Jackson, turning to look for John, his teeth a slash of white against his mud-streaked face, before his head explodes into shards of bone and sprays of blood. It’s brighter than John remembers, and he can feel the bile strike his face, wet and slick and cold, and flinches, turns away. 

Another, it’s the crumbled remains of a ramshackle telegraph hut, destroyed by a bomb, a hand still clutching the telegraph machine in the rubble.

Most nights, it’s Murray, his blood spraying in bright, macabre fountains from his leg, John’s hands buried in the muscle of his thigh, scrambling for purchase, before all explodes white and quiet. Murray’s alive still; John asked. It takes the nurse three days to track him down, in a convalescence home in Dartford, near his home. John writes to him, or, rather, dictates an oddly formal missive to Miss Morstan, one of the many volunteers who attend the men’s bedsides, their books, kind words, and pretty faces bringing some small measure of the relief. Miss Morstan, most agree, is the prettiest of the lot, and her laugh when John flirts is deep and generous. 

“I’ll take you dancing, once I’m out of here,” John says, and means it. 

She arches an eyebrow. “I expect you will,” she says, and John imagines her in silks, whirling and laughing until the small hours, effervescent and flushed. He tries very hard not to imagine her out of those silks and flushed from other exertions and fails spectacularly. 

Murray’s answer comes in a fortnight. He credits John with his life — _I don’t recollect much except you telling me I had to live — had to — because I hadn’t yet learnt to beat you at cards_ — but John’s own memory contains only Murray’s blood, pulsing out, and John’s own hands pressed to Murray’s mangled leg, the wound slippery and hot, then pain, then nothing. 

Murray lost his leg but Ada visits him every day and they’re to be married once he is cleared to leave. John’s to be the best man, if he’s out in time, and Miss Morstan — Mary, she says, _call me Mary_ — finds it all terribly romantic. 

He’s glad she only comes mid-mornings, once he’s shaken off the ghosts of the night but before he’s been worked over by the physician’s aids, who help him to stand, and take shaky steps, and exercise his arm until he’s sure it will rip from his body. John’s unharmed leg still aches. He doesn’t say a word, but he can see the worried glances each time he collapses, leg unable to hold his weight. His left hand shakes intermittently; he is like a child learning to hold a spoon, comb his hair, grasp a pen, as the quakes often result in the held object falling, useless, from his crippled hand.

His gun’s been taken away, and his uniform, and he wears striped pyjamas all day, the fabric tinged yellow from sweat and a pale-rust stain round the hem of the shirt from some other soldier’s wound. Are they soldiers, though, really, he and these boys whose hands shake and eyes water and who shout and shout and don’t speak and are silent? They feel more like refugees. 

It takes months for him to heal, to gain back some of his strength, but he does, grits his teeth and doesn’t shout at pretty, wide-eyed nurses, and flirts with Mary, and plays countless rounds of gin rummy with Andrew and Scott and Alastair. He leaves the hospital for a tiny, bleak room in a crumbling house in London. He heats water for his tea and his baths alike on the tiny coal stove, never stoked enough, but it’s London, it is, and he walks and walks and walks, through the parks belonging to His Majesty and the streets belonging to shopkeepers, to flower-sellers and hawkers of all wares – fruit and cigarettes and willing bodies – all the things made scarce by the war. He walks until it’s without a limp or a stick, and bites back the ache that never quite seems to fade from his unbroken leg. 

In June, he stands up for Murray in a small parish church in Halstead. Ada is tall and fair-haired and steady-handed, and her smile is bright throughout the brief ceremony. Murray stands for the vows, John’s arm at his elbow, and when they exchange rings, Ada takes Murray’s hands and holds them tight. They both help him back to his chair, and for the rest of the night Murray wheels himself around with Ada’s hand on his shoulder.

All Murray’s family — his mother, grey-haired and shrewd-eyed, his father, straight-backed and smiling, and his sister, dark-eyed and mischievous — thank John for Murray’s life, and John nods, and shakes hands, and wonders if Murray would be standing instead of in a wheelchair if John had done more. 

He does take Mary out dancing, and she drinks gin and curses like any sailor John’s met and grins to see him blush. Flushed with the heat and damp with exertion, she’s just as lovely as he’d thought, and when they go outside to share a cigarette he kisses her and kisses her until the cigarette’s forgotten and his hands are at her waist and her leg is between his. She pulls back, leans her head against the brick, and says, “You’re a good dancer, John Watson,” and it’s a blatant lie, and John wants to marry her.

He would, too, but life in London’s not like it was before the war; there are too many boys like John back and not enough jobs. He earns a few shillings at the docks, but with his dominant arm still weak and his grip still troubled by occasional tremors, he’s not up to speed. Most of his rent is won off other soldiers in games of poker, but that’s hardly enough to raise a family.

So when Harry writes to tell him there’s factory work going in Liverpool, John packs up and promises Mary he’ll write.

++

_Autumn 1919_  
 _Liverpool_

Harry shares rooms with a secretary named Clara and works at a flour mill; the first three evenings John’s there she drags him out to a series of pubs, each grimier than the last, and he passes out cold on the tiny settle in Harry and Clara’s sitting room. Harry still makes it out the door in the morning at half five, while John wakes bleary-eyed and stiff, only coming alive with the help of the strong black coffee Clara makes in a pot over the tiny stove.

The first morning, she thumps a heavy earthenware mug down in front of him and sits across the table, chin in her hands and eyes on him intently. He feels unsettled under her direct, uncompromising gaze until she cocks her head and says brightly, “Well. You aren’t at all like Harry’d said.”

John narrows his eyes, lowering his mug. “What’s Harry said?” he asks cautiously. 

“Oh, you know,” Clara says, but doesn’t elaborate. She stands, turning the sixty degrees required to reach the hob in the tiny kitchenette. “Do you want an egg? I’m having an egg.”

The egg is large, and smooth, and brown, and John takes its head off with one quick tap. Harry knows people, Clara explains, and dips a piece of bread into her egg; it comes out sticky-yellow and dripping, and she tilts her head back to drop it in her mouth. John watches the movement of her neck as she swallows. Clara drops her chin down again, catching sight of his face, and laughs. “Harry was right about that,” she says, and John colours, laughs with her. “You have that in common, you two.” She smiles, brightly, gives him a wink he doesn’t much understand until the next evening, coming in from the WC to hear a murmur, a laugh, and the soft, unmistakable sound of a fond kiss from behind the half-closed bedroom door.

The door still caught in his hand, he takes two steps backward and eases it shut. In the hallway, he leans against the wall, tattered wallpaper under his fingertips, and remembers his father’s voice in his head, distant. “You disgusting little invert — you — you filthy bitch —” his words punctuated by slaps. Harry had left shortly after, when he was twelve and she sixteen, and he hadn’t had time to dwell on it.

He lets the door slam open when he steps back inside, and Harry comes out of the bedroom with a bright grin, and they head to the King’s Head. He doesn’t tell Harry what he’d heard.

The boarding house is women-only, so John finds a bedsit a few streets away. Harry’s not wrong: there are jobs going in the sugar refineries, but John’s one of hundreds interested, and he spends most of his days queueing just for a chance to put his name in. After a fortnight, he stops trying. Luckily, Harry knows most everyone in town interested in any dealings slightly less-than-savoury, and he soon enough finds himself in games each evening, making enough back to survive but not so much that he leaves sore losers. They’re queer folk, Harry’s friends, but they part with their money as easy as anyone.

During the day, he takes to walking, like he had in London, but Liverpool fits him like a borrowed glove and he finds little solace in traversing its streets. His leg aches more and more and he writes to Mary less and less as the only words that come fall heavy and bitter and the ink smears on the page at the unpredictable quakes of his hand. Her answers, too, come further apart and shorter until the last one comes, short and straight-forward, with tears blurring the ink. He wonders if the man she found is whole, unscarred, and doesn’t begrudge her happiness. 

Two days later, there’s an advertisement in the Daily Post looking for _men prepared to face a rough and dangerous task._

++

The recruiter at the dingy dockside office merely glances at his discharge papers and character reference. “Sound of body?” he says, quite suddenly.

“I — yes,” John answers, shifting his weight. The man looks him up and down, narrowing his eye. 

“Says here you were shot.”

“That’s correct, sir. In the shoulder.” John lifts his arm, rotates it. “Patched me up well in London.”

“So they did. You have a wife, lad? Children?”

“No sir.”

“Good.” He glances down at John’s papers once more, then copies his name into a ledger. “Pay is ten shillings a day and ye ship out in a fortnight.”

John frowns. “Ship out, sir?”

The man looks up from his ledger. “To Ireland. Didn’t you know?”

John thinks back: he’s heard some talk of unrest on the island, and he remembers, distantly, that day three years ago when news of a rebellion reached them at the front, but most in Liverpool, most in his set — and Harry’s — are far more preoccupied with immediate, pressing concerns like their next meal. “I didn’t realise it was so — that intervention was required.”

“Ah, it’s nothing too taxing. The police have got themselves a wee bit over their heads, need some good English folk to sort them out. Policing and the like.” John feels deflated, somewhat. He’s not cut out to be a copper, he doesn’t think. Still, ten shillings a day.

“Will we see you on Monday, then?”

John nods. “Yes sir.”

“Good lad,” the man says, showing his teeth for the first time in a grimacing sort of grin. He hands John back his papers and gestures to the next man in the queue. 

John goes to a pub and gets a drink, contemplating how to tell Harry that he’s leaving again.

++

She doesn’t take it well, as predicted. She punches his arm and tells him he’s a damn fool, and when he tells her he didn’t have any other choices, she shouts that that’s no excuse to do something stupid. She paces their tiny sitting room until Clara makes tea and forces her to sit down.

“I’ve heard it’s more dangerous than they let on,” Clara says softly, and Harry looks mutinous.

“More than France?” John asks. “More than Belgium?” 

Clara tilts her head. “I’m not sure,” she admits, “but be careful.”

John nods. “It’s just police work,” he says, stifling his own misgivings. Harry snorts, as if she can read his thoughts.

“It’s not and you know it,” she says, sharply. “You wouldn’t want it to be, anyway.” John looks up at her; she bites her lip, but her expression softens. “You’re a damn fool.”

“I know,” he says, smiling, and Harry sighs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I shall try to keep my sources cited to a minimum, but can’t resist a few footnotes on my favorite tidbits of this history. If you’re interested in checking out fictional sources for the time, the tenor, some of the scenes and dialogue, and the very loose general concept of this fic was inspired by Elizabeth Bowen’s novel _The Last September,_ a brilliant and empathetic critique of the last days of the Anglo-Irish Ascendancy during the War of Independence. You might also seek out the film version with David Tennent, but be warned you’ll lose all the delightful lesbian subtext of the book. For the IRA side of things, you can’t go much better than _The Wind That Shakes the Barley,_ starring Cillian Murphy, and if you’re interested in the 1916 Rising paired with a sweeping gay romance (and why wouldn’t you be), you must read Jamie O’Neill’s _At Swim, Two Boys._ Go get it right now; I’ll wait.
> 
> For more bits & bobs, please feel free to follow me on tumblr or just follow the fic’s tag.
> 
> FINALLY, because British Pathé has been so amazingly generous as to digitise and upload tens of thousands of their film clips to youtube, I’ll also include a link to pertinent film clips from the time in each week’s instalment! It’s such a treasure trove; you all really should go and dig into it for a few hours (days).
> 
> **This week’s clip:[Unemployed (1920)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCg4f_t6vDs)**
> 
>  **1\. Battle on the streets of Dublin.** The 1916 Rising began on Easter Monday, 24th April, and lasted for six days, during which time Irish activists took over a number of official buildings in Dublin, including the General Post Office (GPO), the Four Courts, City Hall, Jacob’s Biscuit Factory, and Boland’s Mill, as well as barricading a number of streets and besieging St Stephen’s Green, in order to force the British Government’s hand in the matter of a free Irish Republic. Though taken off-guard at first, by the end of the week British forces outnumbered the Volunteers approximately 16,000 to 1,600 by the end of the week, and within six days the Republican leaders surrendered. Over 500 were killed and 2500 wounded.
> 
>  **2\. Pearse, a poet, Plunkett, a newlywed, Connolly, already on the brink of death.** Fifteen total leaders of the Easter Rising were executed, having been found guilty of treason, from May 3-12. This refers to Padraig Pearse, known mostly as a poet and a teacher; Joseph Plunkett, who married his sweetheart and fellow Republican Grace Gifford while in jail awaiting execution; and James Connolly, who sustained such serious injuries during the Rising that he had to be strapped to a chair for his execution.
> 
> Most historians agree that many in Ireland thought the Rising was a waste, at best, and treasonous, at worst, but that the swift and uncompromising execution of the leaders began to turn the tides, creating figureheads for the next wave of rebellion. 
> 
> **3. _men prepared to face a rough and dangerous task._** This is the actual text of an advertisement seeking recruits for a new temporary constabulary to send to Ireland to supplement the Royal Irish Constabulary (RIC). These recruits would become known as the Black  & Tans.


	2. 1916

_April 1916_  
 _Co. Cork_

Mummy is insistent on Easter, always has been: her boys home, full Mass and confession, and a fattened Irish lamb for supper. Sherlock takes the train down from Dublin and is met at the station by Maxwell in a new motoring car; no amount of Sherlock’s cajoling can convince the old man to let Sherlock have a go, for he’s long since been inured to Sherlock’s ways. New servants are clearly necessary. 

Mycroft arrives two days later, on Good Friday, which no doubt scandalises those who see him step off the ferry. Sherlock’s disregard for Catholic piety is the iconoclastic declaration of rational atheism; Mycroft’s is the quiet embrace of good modern political sense. Their mother prays rosaries for them both. Much good may they do.

Father comes to Cork on the same boat as Mycroft and kisses Mummy quite politely on the cheek, and reads newspapers and files all weekend long, when he’s not tending the hives. Mycroft would stay in the study as well, were it not for Mummy’s still-pernicious hold on her boys, even at fifteen and twenty-two, and instead the two of them are forced into all manner of lawn games in the company of some distant cousin or another visiting. Sherlock trounces them all at croquet, because it’s angles, just angles; and, he suspects, because Mycroft is being diplomatic and letting the cousin — Evelyn? — win, which is hateful. 

The weather is fine enough for tea on the lawn, and Father emerges from his study peevishly to light a prodigious pipe and enquire after Sherlock’s schooling; Sherlock would rather he’d stayed with his files. Tea is laid by Mummy’s newest housemaid, whose hands skitter the china against the plate-glass tabletop with nerves, which only increase under Mummy’s disapproving glare. Mummy says, before the maid is quite out of earshot, “These local girls are deplorable; no training to speak of.”

The rest of the table ignores her, far too used to her disparaging comments about every servant in her employ. Maxwell is the only one who has stayed longer than a year or two; when Sherlock was little, he believed Maxwell was built with the house. Mummy only employs local girls as maids, refusing to bring them over from England — like many of the households in the area — out of sheer patriotic stubbornness, but it seems her Irish fervour doesn’t extend to her fellow countrymen in the flesh. The cousin — Evelyn, yes, Sherlock’s certain — blinks and seems about to say something when Mycroft sniffs delicately and speaks over her, commenting inanely on the weather.

“I would say England has made you dull,” Sherlock says, pilfering a handful of biscuits from the platter, “but you always were.” 

“I see Belvedere has no notion of teaching you manners, it seems. I wonder in what else it is deficient? How is your Latin? History?” Sherlock deplores both, as well Mycroft knows, so he bites resolutely into a biscuit and shrugs, mouth full of crumbs.

“Oh, Sherlock,” Mummy says, but with little feeling. Father ignores the entire exchange. “And how is your mother, Eva dear?” Mummy asks, turning to Evelyn — Eva, apparently — with her solicitous company smile. 

Eva blinks back at her and says, “Dead,” and Sherlock laughs into his fist. Mummy merely says, “Oh, how dreadful,” to which Eva answers, “Well, it was a decade ago,” and Sherlock’s laugh turns to a cough. Eva’s mild, milky blue eyes turn to him in some amusement, but she doesn’t say anything else. 

“And your sister? Married?” Mummy continues. Sherlock wonders if the sister will be dead as well, or perhaps merely dismembered. Preferably to marriage, at any rate. 

“Mm,” Eva hums, and bites into a scone. The table waits patiently for her to finish chewing; the social life at Norbury, Sherlock thinks. Riveting. Realising they expect more, Eva swallows and says, “Six months ago. Living in Dublin.” 

“And her husband?” Mycroft delicately examines his nails, and Father clearly would rather be in his study, or tending the bees. Sherlock scuffs his foot against the grass and eats another biscuit. They’re sweet — too sweet, perhaps — but Mycroft has been glancing at the platter every thirty-seven seconds, on average, and has put only two small salmon pate sandwiches on his plate, so Sherlock builds a small pile of them and eats each, one after another, with visible pleasure. 

Eva, who had been on the verge of taking another bite, regretfully puts her scone down and smiles. “A socialist,” she says brightly, and Mummy pinks but says, “Isn’t that nice.” Mycroft coughs. 

Mummy sips her tea, seemingly satisfied with having done her hostessing duty, and, with relief, Eva finally bites into her scone, and the small tea table is quiet but for the rustling breeze and the clink of china. 

++

The tea has grown cold and Sherlock restless by the time Mummy releases them. Sherlock immediately stalks to the stables behind the house; the structure’s roof sags precipitously to the left and the old cart nag, who bears the unlikely name of Maeve, is the only horse still inhabiting its walls. He hears the shift of her heavy hooves as he pushes through the door, and he pats her nose as he passes. He has to scramble to get into the hay loft, for the ladder lacks a significant number of steps, but it discourages visitors so he hasn’t bothered repair as yet. 

In the loft, the air shimmers with dust motes and the kicked-up remains of ancient hay. A broom stands in one corner, and Sherlock dutifully takes it up and continues to clear the floor of decades of disuse. 

He’s working the caked-in dirt out of a corner when a discreet cough sounds behind him. Eva pokes her head up through the trapdoor, looking at him with interest, and before he can say a word, she pushes herself up through to sit at the edge, not minding her muslin afternoon dress. “Um,” Sherlock begins, and Eva says, brightly, “What a tip! Are you doing something very interesting with it?”

Sherlock narrows his eyes. “I’m making a laboratory,” he says. If he is to be trapped at Norbury between terms, he might at least have something interesting to do. 

“Oh, splendid!” Eva says. She climbs to her feet, ungainly in her narrow-cut dress, and brushes off her bottom. “Are you an alchemist, then?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snaps, “I’m a scientist.”

“Just another word for alchemy,” she says mildly, cocking her head, and Sherlock bristles. 

“May I help?” She ignores his ill-temper and inspects the tools jumbled in a crate under the windowsill. He’ll not be able to repair the basic structural damage to the roof, but hopes to seal it off enough to protect his work from the environment. Some ancestor had a fondness for Irish folk craft, and though the stable is sturdy Irish brick, the roof is tight-woven thatch and has not been touched in decades. “I’m quite handy,” she says, picking up a hammer and hefting it in her palm. 

Sherlock considers. A second pair of hands would be useful, and she seems less intolerable than most of his other relatives. “If you must,” he says, coolly, and points the end of the broom to the window, where the shutter hangs precariously on its hinges. She nods and picks up a can of nails, and soon enough they’re working in tandem, the results inexpert but serviceable. 

The air proves too close after a few hours; Sherlock has long since removed his cuffs and collar and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. Eva’s delicately ruffled cuffs have very small mother-of-pearl buttons and only come undone enough to bare the lower part of her forearm, but until he finally suggests they stop, she does not flag. 

He jumps from the loft to the stable floor; Eva follows more carefully, reaching feet searching for each still-intact step, while Sherlock pumps water into a mostly-clean bucket and cups it in his hands to take a long, messy draught. Eva’s hands, in the water, are very small and smeared with dirt; water drips from her palms to track down her neck and dampen the front of her bodice. Through it the top edge of her corset shows — her chest heaving with exertion — and she smells musky with sweat. She has unbuttoned the high collar and it flops away, limp, flanking the knobby rise of her collarbone. Sherlock’s stomach turns, distastefully, as she rubs stray hairs back from her damp forehead, into the haphazard mound pinned and twisted at the crown. She grins up at him, cheeks flushed bright, and says, “Well. I do hope your maids are adept at chasing out stains, or Aunt Violet will have my head.” 

She rubs at the dust settled across the rise of her chest, her damp hands only adding to the streaks, and Sherlock wonders if this is the sort of conversation a gentleman would put a stop to. He is at turns fascinated and vaguely uneasy to anticipate what she might do next. Strange creatures, women, he thinks, though she’s little like any other women he’s met; he is comforted to think that, if faced with Eva, frank and bold and lacking in coyness, none of the boastful chaps at Belvedere would know what to do, either. 

“I, um —” he starts, and she looks up, blinking, and says, “Don’t spoil it,” in an undertone, and he swallows his breath and nods. He would, he thinks, prefer to snap at her, something witty and cutting, but he finds that something — the shrewdness of her eyes, her sharp little chin, the way her hands gripped round the hammer — precludes his words. 

“We’ll have to rejoin the rest sometime,” she says, resigned, and wipes her hands against her hips. 

“Father will have returned to his study, and Mycroft with him if we’ve any luck at all,” Sherlock reasons. “No need to hasten.” Her lip twitches, not quite a smile, and she turns on her heel to head out the door and sprawl in the grass of the lawn. 

++

The Easter meal is, perhaps aptly, ripe and pregnant with impatience, all those seated round the table fostering a desire to be elsewhere. Sherlock eats two bites of lamb; the mint cloys his senses, overpowering. Across from him, Maxwell dutifully refills Eva’s wine glass once more, which she drinks too quickly, lips tinged pink with it, and sets it back down unsteadily. Mycroft notices, of course, but says nothing. In fact, his lips stay tightly pursed throughout, a surprisingly transparent display of his frustration, no doubt due to his discussion with Father earlier this afternoon. Sherlock suspects — hopes, with an angry trill of pleasure — that Mycroft has been quite sternly berated over his position in this family and his over-eagerness to immerse himself in politics. He’s to sit in the House of Lords one day, after all; it simply won’t do.

Sherlock had spent some time in his brother’s chambers earlier that day — it can hardly be called snooping if Mycroft leaves everything so easily accessibly, with only one paltry lock on his secretary desk — and had rifled through a fair amount of correspondence with a number of discussions of the “Irish question”, that ineffective euphemism, between Mycroft and assorted persons on either side of the Irish Sea. Sherlock recognised, vaguely, a few names — Carson, Churchill, Asquith — though if he ever had known their positions, he has since scrubbed them from his mind, leaving behind not a single blot on the power of his memory. 

Father pushes back his chair before dessert is served — which is just as well, for it’s only cheese, in deference to Mycroft’s battle with his waistline — and makes some vague excuse to leave. Mycroft departs with more decorum, and Sherlock takes no time at all in rushing from the room to escape out back, dinner jacket thrown over the door of Maeve’s stall and feet fleet on the ladder up to the loft. 

He pounds, too heavily perhaps, on the hinges of an old wardrobe commandeered from a little-used guest room, trying to get the door to hang straight. “You’ll break it,” Eva says, behind him. Her voice is hoarse.

“What do you know?” Sherlock snaps, not turning to look, and he can feel as much as hear her sigh. Eva steps closer; her tread is heavy, not the light ginger steps of her evening slippers. She’s changed shoes, into riding boots it sounds like, just to follow him out here.

She makes a noise of disgust, and he turns, finally, to see her perched on the windowsill, dinner gown rucked up between her knees and — yes — polished riding boots braced at the heel against the floor. Her hands grip tight to the sill, knuckles pale. 

“You’re drunk,” he says, but not dismissively. He narrows his eyes, and she turns away, looking instead at the floor to his left. “But it’s not just that. You’re — worried, aren’t you? About —” he shakes his head; it’s nothing he’s noticed throughout her visit, this terseness to her shoulders. 

“Well spotted,” she says, with little rancour, and slips her hand — alarmingly — into her bodice, drawing out a tightly-folded letter. She hands it to him: the paper is fine, the broken seal a plough in green wax, and the hand a well-educated woman’s. He scans the lines quickly — it’s quite short — and flips it over. 

“From your sister?” She nods. “And your godmother is arriving tomorrow? I fail to see how that would distress you so, unless you don’t get on.”

Eva scoffs. “I thought you were clever,” she says, dryly, and Sherlock frowns. He looks at the letter once more.

“It’s a code,” he says slowly. “Something’s to happen tomorrow; something you fear.” Her lips tighten, and he thinks on the seal. “Another lockout?” He’d only just gone up to Dublin when the lockout happened, and the whole city had roiled. Mycroft had sent a telegram warning him in no uncertain terms not to become involved, but he had, of course, slipped his tutorials to walk amongst the crowds in Sackville Street, observing.

“Worse,” Eva says, and won’t say more, which can only mean — 

“I can borrow the motor,” he says, excitedly. An armed revolution: foolish, absurd really, but think of what he could observe, what he could learn! “We could be in Dublin by — oh, by mid-morning.”

“No — no!” Eva pushes away from the window, crowding into Sherlock’s space. She’s a head shorter than him, more, really, in her flat-heeled boots, but she doesn’t hesitate to push against his chest with one tight-clenched fist. “We can’t — it can’t be stopped; I thought, after today, but — they’ll go forward and, and they’ll die, every one of them, and —” 

“You don’t want it to happen,” he says, slowly. “Aren’t they your politics, just the same?”

“Not like this,” she says, and wipes at her eyes with the backs of her knuckles. 

“I — alright,” he says, though he still thinks wistfully of the motor and the dark, winding roads up to Dublin.

“Can we simply —” she swallows, shakes her head. “Just — let’s stay, until the news comes.” Sherlock peers at her, then nods; he picks up his hammer again.

++

The telegram doesn’t arrive until mid-morning, and, when he receives it, Father’s shouts can be heard all the way in the stables. Eva curls in the corner, untroubled in sleep, and Sherlock leaves without waking her. 

Father rants equally about the _bloody Fenians,_ about _Easter nonsense,_ about _Irish provincialism._ It’s not clear whether he’s more irate over whatever is happening in Dublin or Mummy’s refusal to have a telephone put in. Mummy ignores him; Sherlock goes to her elbow and she holds out, hand shaking, the telegram. 

_FENIAN RISING DUBLIN STOP FOUR COURTS STEPHENS GREEN GPO CITY HALL TAKEN STOP ARMED AND SHOOTING STOP_

It’s from Mummy’s aunt, a formidable women of the Celtic warrior mould; Sherlock has met her once and her enormous hat and equally enormous bosoms loom large in his memory. The typewritten words are very stark on the page. 

“Mummy?” Her eyes roll toward him, her face pale. Taking her elbow, he guides her to sit, and she wrings her hands together in her lap.

“Foolish,” she says, her voice small, and he grasps around for a handkerchief. He has none. “They’ll get themselves killed, and for what?”

Mycroft strides into the room, clean-starched in his travelling suit already, and adjusts his cuffs. They don’t need adjusting; he’s picked up infuriatingly polite little gestures like that, moments of feigned imperfection, in order to disarm people. Sherlock would like very much to hit him. “I’m afraid I’m away,” he says, his face pinched.

“What? You can’t travel,” Mummy says, indignant, and Mycroft leans down to kiss her pale cheek. Her hand grips against the settee, bone white on the ornate brocade. Sherlock’s never thought of her hands as skeletal before now. 

“I must,” he says, with a false note of apology. “It’s quite safe down here, and there will be work to do.”

“Oh, yes, because you’re so indispensable. An Irish voice on the Irish question, no doubt,” Sherlock says, and Mycroft narrows his eyes, but says nothing. “Tell me,” Sherlock says, cocking his head, “do they enjoy having their own little Paddy to get the tea and scones?”

“Sherlock!” Mummy rebukes. “Don’t be vile.” Sherlock grits his teeth; Mycroft’s ears, he’s pleased to note, are pink at the tips. 

“You’re not to go up to Dublin,” Mycroft says, instead of responding. “Not until this mess is over.” 

“I’ve school,” Sherlock says peevishly, as if he cared.

“Not now,” Mycroft says, in his too-slow voice he uses when he finds Sherlock especially onerous. “The streets are barricaded.” Mummy makes a quiet little sob; they both ignore her.

“And what am I to do?”

“I don’t care. Tend Mummy, tend Eva. Tend the bees. Try not to start any fires.” Sherlock huffs. As though he were the type that _tends_ anything. “I’m leaving,” Mycroft says, and pulls the cord to call Maxwell. “This won’t last long,” he says, assured, and Sherlock nearly hopes for a months-unbroken siege, just to prove him wrong.

He takes the telegram to Eva; it crumples in her fist. Her hair is rumpled, her dress stained, and she pounds her hand, curled tight around the telegram, against the floor until her knuckles come up bloody. “It’s so — so _bloody_ useless,” she says, spitting the curse, and Sherlock is inclined to agree with her. 

“The Crown forces may not now outnumber any amount of rebels, but they’ll be able to bring in more units from — oh, from Belfast, or Liverpool, it doesn’t matter,” he says. It’s simply common sense, basic strategy. Eva blinks at him, chest heaving with unbreathed sobs. “With more men, and more firepower against them, they’ll be defeated in a day.”

“That’s not actually reassuring,” Eva says, voice hoarse. “There’s not been a successful rebellion in Ireland ever before.” She trails off, gaze falling somewhere out the window. “But they try and they try.” She sighs and looks back to Sherlock. “I want to go up.”

“What?”

“They’ll need me. I can’t — my family’s there. My sister; she’ll be — she and her husband both, they’re for the cause. They’ll be fighting. I can’t just _leave_ them.”

“Well,” Sherlock says. “We’ll have to wait for the motor, and they’ll notice and send someone after us if we leave today. Tomorrow, at sunrise.” She takes a deep breath.

“You’d do that?”

Sherlock shrugs; the gesture conveys a nonchalance he’s not certain he contains. “A bit of danger never hurt.”

“Actually, I’m fairly certain that’s what danger is,” Eva says, and his grin curls up the corners of his lips. 

++

The sun has barely unfurled its long, rosy fingers when Sherlock meets Eva at the servant’s door. The motor, stored not in the stables but in the carriage hall at some remove, is nonetheless too close to the house to start. Father and Mycroft have left, of course, away on the first ferry taking passengers, but Mummy’s hearing is keen. Eva stands in the open side door of the motor and steers as they move, Sherlock pushing from the rear, and below the tyres the gravel crunches deafeningly. 

Once round the front of the house, they dare to start the motor; with the buffer of the drawing room, study, and ballroom, it’s possible the sounds will not travel to Mummy’s room, nor to the servants still sleeping up under the eaves. It takes three tries to get it going, neither having driven it before, but after seemingly endless amounts of cranking the engine roars up, and Eva smacks her hands, delighted, against the steering wheel. He approaches her side, but she closes the door with a narrowed glare; with a huff Sherlock rounds to the passenger’s seat and climbs in, bringing his hat down and turning his collar up against the early chill. 

Sherlock has brought along a vast volume of the Ordnance Survey pilfered from the library, and he peers at the fine, narrow lines of the winding roads in the dull early morning light. Their journey is one of increments: Mallow, Charleville, Tipperary, Thurles. Maryborough. Kildare, Newbridge. Dublin. Pinpoints only. 

They’ll not reach Dublin until nightfall, likely; Sherlock thinks, with a churning disappointment, that it will all be over by then. Eva drives a motor like she drives nails: with more force than skill, yet managing success, for though they bounce along painfully, they make a quick clip and stay out of the ditches. At some point, Sherlock will push on her to give him a go; he’s not driven a motor before excepting one very brief attempt with Mummy’s last car which had ended with the front crashed vertically in the ha-ha, him having vastly underestimated the vehicle’s ability to clear wide gaps if given enough of a run-up. He’d had a ramp in mind for the second go, having recalculated the trajectory, but Maxwell never could get the engine running again. 

As it turns out, Eva aggressively ignores all of his suggestions to give him a turn, and they don’t stop until she pulls aside abruptly in Charleville and says, “We’ll be needing petrol.” 

He blinks; he’s glad she’s thought of it, for he hadn’t, but he says, “Obviously,” and glances around. She narrows her eyes and climbs out of the car, opening the small back boot to reveal a metal can and lifting it up. Sherlock purses his lips as she manoeuvres it into place and waits while the petrol glugs out. Finally, curiosity having won out, he says, “However did you learn all of this?”

She bites her lip, screwing the cap down tight and placing the can back into the boot. “I’ve a friend,” she says simply.

“A mechanic?” he says derisively; her cheeks pink up. _Oh,_ he thinks. Rather a good friend, then. A sweetheart?

“No,” she says shortly, “but her father employs a very obliging chauffeur.” Sherlock raises one eyebrow. “We make excuses for him when he goes to political meetings,” she says, narrowing her eyes. “You’re worse than an old spinster.”

He hums merely and regards her. She rubs at her cheeks, as though that will bring the stain away, and looks resolutely at the road in front of them. The car idles still, and he wonders if she’ll push him to the driver’s seat just to bring the subject of conversation away from her. Instead, she makes a small, pained sound and rubs at her stomach. “Breakfast, now, I think,” she says, and reaches in to turn the switch that kills the engine. 

Charleville has one main street and five pubs; only one shows any signs of life so it’s there they troop. The landlord eyes them with suspicion but serves them two meat pies and half pints of stout; the creamy head coats Sherlock’s stomach uncomfortably, but he drinks it in large, thirsty gulps. 

Something niggles at his mind. Despite her earlier urging, Eva picks at her plate with a fork, eating tiny, nibbling bites. “I apologise for any offence caused,” he says, slowly, to gauge her distraction. She glances up, surprised, and he adds, “It’s clear it’s not the chauffeur you’re sweet on.” 

“You know nothing,” she snaps, then inhales and lowers her voice. “Don’t speak of it.” He’s — he had no certainty, really, had struck out blindly with a hunch, and her vehemence, her gritted teeth and narrowed eyes and red-tipped ears, somehow shocks. 

“I’m sorry,” he says, more truthful this time, and wants to say — so much. How she knew her own feelings, and if her — her friend — feels the same, and how she can live in this stifling world. 

She narrows her eyes. “I can’t —” she starts, touching her fingertips to the edge of the table, nervously. She looks around them, as if to other patrons, though the only others in the pub are two uncaring men at the bar, who talk in low tones to each other and the landlord and ignore Sherlock and Eva altogether. “It’s not something you’d understand,” she says, more gently, as if she’s allowing him a great favour, and he raises an eyebrow. Knowingly, he hopes, but she simply looks to the table between them, running the tip of her finger through the ring of liquid left by her glass. 

“I know more than you might think,” he says, enigmatically, for by the way she grits her jaw, noisily, it’s not something she is able to talk about with many, and her hand, shoving an errant strand of hair forcefully behind her ear, says she’s nervous, but not ashamed, and he wants to know what that means. 

“I wondered,” she says, and he frowns. She leans closer on the table — her elbows at the corners, and he sees, abstractly, the way he sees everything, that the dampness from her glass seeps into the sleeve of her brown travelling suit. “Have you a sweetheart, then? Or — I don’t know what you chaps say.” She grins at him, and he feels once more like he had in the stables, two long days ago, faintly nauseated and yet intrigued. He shifts under the table, and his feet clatter against the table-legs. The men at the bar fall silent, and he clears his throat. 

“I apologise,” she says, biting down on her lip. “You’re just so —” she shakes her head, and he doesn’t learn what he is so. For a moment, he wonders if they’ve both forgotten the task before them and the — and Dublin. In the quiet between them, she wipes the back of her hand across her mouth, and when it comes away the lips are tighter, and no, she hasn’t. 

“We should —” she starts, and he nods, and they leave their pies half-eaten.

++

Sherlock drives next, and it’s more difficult than he’d imagined, so he bites his lip and keeps quiet in concentration until he learns the feel of the vehicle. Eva wrings her hands, working her short, pale fingers together, her silence little to do with his driving. They keep a quick clip until — well, he thinks they’re near to Thurles, but he’s lost accounting, a bit, of the miles, with the winding and twisting of the roads — until the car makes quite a large clatter and comes to a juddering stop, listing precipitously to the left. 

They’re in the centre of the road, clear and smooth and sun-dried dirt under their tyres, and he’s not hit anything. Eva looks at him, wide-eyed, her lip bloodied where she bit down in the impact. He fumbles at the door, shoving it open enough to haul himself out, the task made more difficult by the steep incline of the vehicle’s cab. 

Eva’s tumbling out of her own door when he reaches that side, and she nearly trips over the tyre, which lies quite a bit further from the motor car than it has any right to be. “Oh,” she says, rather dumbly, and Sherlock doesn’t add anything. Any idiot could tell that this is not, in fact, the proper configuration of things, and the jagged edge of the axle suggests that they’ll have a time trying to make it so. 

“I don’t —” Sherlock starts. Eva kicks at the tyre and yelps in frustration. “We won’t be getting to Dublin today, I’m afraid,” he says, more to fill the air than anything, but Eva lets out a great sob and slaps her hand against the side of the car, and he feels rather churlish for having said anything.

He thinks of alternatives, but barring borrowing a cart and horse here in Thurles, they haven’t much choice. Trains, they learnt from last evening’s paper, are not running into Dublin at all, and though he supposes they could steal another motor car, Eva’s desperation seems unlikely to trump her generally moral spirit. Bicycles would take a full day, at least. He looks about them: the fields roll to either side, broad and green and empty of anything of use, just grazing sheep. Not even an old cart-horse in sight. 

It all feels quite small, insignificant, their being waylaid like this; the Rising is broad and grand in his mind, and looming and fearsome in Eva’s, he has no doubt, and to be stopped by a — by the mere fragility of metal — is shocking, unexpected.

“I suppose we’re walking,” Sherlock says, for it’s that or wait, and they’ve not seen another soul in two hours at least. Eva gulps, a wretched little sound, but nods and lifts her travelling hat from the seat, pinning it into place as they set off.

++

They never make it to Dublin, not while the Rising still rages. It’s market day in Thurles, which means plenty of people and all too busy to take spare travellers any further than a few miles along the road. It’s strange, Sherlock thinks, how life moves around them; concern — and not a little anger — lurks in the hushed conversations, but for the most part folks think the rebels are mere fools, if they’re being kind. Damned traitors if not. 

Many have family on the front, boys sent out to fight for the Empire: Sherlock can see it in the set of a shoulder of old man buying onions, in the letters posted by a woman who wraps her shawl tighter around her shoulders, as if against the pain of the day, in the boys weaving between the people in the square, their hands mock guns and the heroic glint of battle in their eyes. Much of what they hear is against the rebellion, and beside him Eva stiffens, walking with hands curled tight. 

They get a lift from a farmer who drops them three miles outside of Maryborough, reeking of pigs, and walk on now-sore feet toward the twilight-dimmed town. They never make it into the town, however, for a ramshackle barricade blocks the road, defended by two skittish-looking boys with ancient rifles. 

“Halt!” one cries, and raising an eyebrow at Eva, Sherlock stops. 

“We’re only on our way to town,” he says, letting his voice lilt up into the still-fading pitch of youth and dropping as much of the plummy, clipped tones learnt from Father as possible. He sounds little like himself, though between Dublin and Cork, Mummy and Father, he’s not quite certain what his voice is _supposed_ to be. Mimicry has carried him through uncomfortable situations before, and, just as he’d thought, the boy lowers his weapon cautiously. 

“We’re not to let anyone through,” he says, with clear misgivings. 

“Me sister’s near knocked off her feet,” Sherlock says, stepping forward and taking Eva’s elbow.

“Well —” 

“Please,” Sherlock says, and the man tilts his head; in the low light, the crown of his hair is inky black. He bumps his companion with an elbow, and the other man lowers his gun, too, and jerks his head to the road beyond. 

“G’on,” he says, with sharp gruffness that clearly comes unfamiliar to him. They’re not much older than Sherlock, and he wonders if either has held a gun before. He holds Eva’s arm more firmly, for she trembles, just a bit, beside him, despite her squared shoulders and grim-set lips, and they skirt the barricade, tramping in the damp grass. The second man’s eyes follow them, sharp on Sherlock’s shoulders, until they round the curve of the road and disappear from sight.

In town, they find an inn with two rooms; it takes the last of Sherlock’s coin, and he knows, with a desperate certainty, that they will not make it to Dublin. He lays quite still on top of the coverlet in the quiet night and waits for the morning, and the scolding it will bring.

It brings only Maxwell, in a borrowed car and a stern expression, for Mummy has refused to travel the roads — “Not while these hooligans are out” — as though the rebellion were a personal betrayal. Sherlock and Eva ride grimly in the back, and it’s a long, silent journey back to Norbury, where all is unchanged.

++

_Summer 1917_  
 _Co. Cork_

“I don’t want him to leave Ireland.” Mummy’s voice floats up the stairs, airy. Mycroft’s answer comes in the grating, polished tones he’s picked up in London.

“To have him do what? Attend university in _Cork?”_ Incredulity suits him, Sherlock thinks wickedly. Sherlock lies back on the landing, letting his head rest over the edge of the first riser. Blood swims to his head, pounds in his ears; the heartbeat thrum mingles with the soft patter of rain outside and doesn’t quite drown out the argument in the drawing room below. They’ve left the door open; Mycroft intends for him to overhear. 

“And?” his mother prods. Sherlock sighs to the ceiling. 

“It’s not suitable. Sherlock has a promising future; he needs a proper education —”

“Unlike these heathens and papists, you mean?” Her voice grows increasingly calm, and it would be better if it grew shrill. Sherlock bites down on his lip and waits for Mycroft’s stroke.

“You know that’s not what I mean, Mummy.” Condescension. Excellent. 

“And what, precisely, do you mean?” Sherlock can imagine the wince on Mycroft’s face; he’s caused it often enough himself. “I’ve sent him away once already —”

“To Dublin,” Mycroft interrupts, and Sherlock pulls himself abruptly to sitting. It’s quite serious, then, Mycroft’s wish to have him safely installed at Oxford. “That hardly counts.”

“You’d have me here alone?” Mummy says, grasping, and Sherlock can hear the rustle of her skirt against the carpet. 

“You’ll have the servants,” Mycroft says gently, which is his way of boasting. 

Neither have asked what Sherlock wants, and neither would grant it if they had. Away from Ireland, from Norbury, yes — yes, oh — but not to the dreary hermetic self-congratulatorium of Oxford. There are far more interesting things in the world, now especially, and so many secrets to know.

He contents himself with those he holds already: Mycroft’s arrogant fear; the migratory patterns of the bees in the back pasture; and the comings and goings of certain boats into Queenstown Harbour. Tucking them away — future study needed — he clatters down the stairs where — yes — Mycroft’s ears are pink, and Mummy’s shoulders stiff, and an intolerable persistence lingers in the air.

He’ll have no luck convincing them — either — that the continent’s the place for him. Mycroft is, as ever, bent on Sherlock following him to a ministerial position, to represent the family once he ascends to the House of Lords upon Father’s death. Mummy, of course, wept herself dry over Father’s departure to the front and has spent her days since not noticing the war at all.

Sherlock pours himself a generous glass of port, raising it with an eyebrow in Mycroft’s direction. “To Oxford,” he says. _And to its trains to London._

++

_January 1918_  
 _Oxford_

“Wouldn’t you like to fight?” Victor asks, leaning against Sherlock’s legs. His shoulder blades, bony, dig into the tender spots below Sherlock’s knees. “Your father’s cavalry, isn’t he?”

“It sounds dreadfully boring,” Sherlock says, effacing a yawn. It doesn’t, really, though. “Tramping about in the mud for king and country.”

“Don’t be a milksop,” Victor says, reaching back to slap Sherlock’s thigh. Sherlock lets him, doesn’t grasp the hand and twist the wrist cruelly, like he has a passing thought to do.

“Oh, alright,” he says, projecting the air of someone giving in quite reluctantly. 

“You’re not a conchie, are you?” Victor’s eyes, peering up from where his head tilts back across Sherlock’s thighs, are dark and tight. 

“I don’t object conscientiously,” Sherlock says, peevishly. “Merely logically. Were I to participate in this war, I would be of far more use to His Majesty’s empire as intelligence, not brute force. You, on the other hand,” he continues, with a milky sort of fondness. His hand hovers near Victor’s ear but doesn’t touch, and Victor bats it away. 

“I’m the brute force sort, am I?” he says, mouth twisting. Sherlock smiles benevolently. Victor plays cricket, and will be a solicitor; he has no siblings and a father with expectations. He’ll never have the chance to be brute force. 

“Don’t be petulant,” Sherlock says, adopting the fey, bored tone of his more aristocratic peers. He’s an excellent mimic, having tucked away any rhotic rolling adopted in his childhood. Were it not for his rather paltry title, he’d seem — to outsiders, at least — of their milieu. 

“Don’t be bold,” Victor counters, pushing himself away from Sherlock’s legs, up off the floor. His feet are bare against the carpet, his collar and cuffs undone; his narrow lips are pale and strict as a Flemish portrait. He doesn’t touch Sherlock except here, in Sherlock’s rooms, and always with a skittish hand.

“I think I might — quit,” he says, striking a match against the mantle. He smokes Player’s Navy Cut, dependable and British, and keeps the cards from each box tucked away in a leather case on his bookshelf, a child’s collection he holds quite close and secret. It’s polar explorers this month. Sherlock rolls his foot, pointing his bare toes at an ashtray on the floor. It’s not that he cares for the carpet, but he’s making a study of the ash.

“This conversation?” Sherlock says dryly as Victor leans to pick up the ashtray. “How delightful.”

Victor sneers. “I meant Oxford, and you knew it. The war’s nearly finished; there won’t be another chance for me.”

“What will your father think?” Sherlock needles; predictably, Victor flushes crimson up his neck and looks away. Smoke meanders with the breeze from the window, and Sherlock picks out a cigarette of his own from the tin at his elbow: Carroll’s, this time, to annoy Mycroft. 

“I’m nineteen; I needn’t ask his permission.” Sherlock hums, and Victor blusters, pacing in a tight circle now. “I’m quite determined, Holmes. You shan’t convince me otherwise.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Sherlock says languidly and exhales a perfect smoke ring. He leaves his lips pursed, aware of the delicate stretch of his fingers around the cigarette, and shifts so his knees fall open, apart. Victor looks at him, then away. “Goddamn it, Holmes,” he mutters, his agitation-pinked fingertips drumming against his thigh before he stubs out his cigarette angrily and cuffs Sherlock round the back of the neck. “I wish you weren’t such a — a bloody —”

Sherlock blinks up at him, then brings his cigarette to his lips and inhales unwaveringly. He doesn’t wait long before Victor drops to his knees, hands clutching at Sherlock’s hips under the spread of his dressing gown, and not long at all before they’re knee-to-knee and elbows bumping in Sherlock’s narrow bed.

++

Victor does leave, just after Hilary term ends. He doesn’t tell Sherlock, though Sherlock knows, when he comes to him in his rooms on a Tuesday evening and sucks him without preamble then, with a messy hard-edged kiss, leaves. Sherlock sighs to see his broad-shouldered back walk out the door and returns to the study of poisons he’d been reading — and correcting. He thinks, in passing, of following Victor to London, of watching him, resolute and fearful, walk into the bureau, of waiting to see if he emerges changed. It’s too — too desperate, too grasping — so he won’t. 

With Victor gone, Sherlock is friendless once more. Victor had friends, of course, who tolerated Sherlock’s presence: Percy Chambers, who has taken on the responsibility for Victor’s small terrier; Augustus Everetton, who reads history and has ignored Sherlock ever since Sherlock revealed that his father was actually a draper; and Fitzwilliam James, who introduces himself once more to Sherlock every time they meet, having forgotten, as he does most things, that they are acquainted. 

The world is far too interesting to bother, Sherlock tells himself, and he goes to tutorials as he must and spends the rest of his time in the laboratories and the libraries, deeply entrenched in all that human knowledge has acquired and in the promise of all it has yet to know.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[War in Ireland - Easter Rebellion (1916)](http://youtu.be/zOlrtS2nsCE)**
> 
> **1\. Eva.** Eva is loosely inspired by an actual person, Eva Gore-Booth, who was a well-known playwright, poet, suffragette, and activist within the socialist pacifist realms of Irish Nationalism. Though not as well known as her sister, Countess Constance Markievicz, Eva was an active player in the cultural revival of Celtic history, literature, and arts that accompanied the revolution. While Constance was on the front lines during the Rising — the story goes that she dared the British to execute her, but they didn’t because she was a woman — Eva disagreed with the concept of armed rebellion. She lived out much of her life with her partner, fellow poet and activist Esther Roper, whom she met at age 26 during a convalescence in Italy. Eva died at age 56 in 1926. For what would become their joint headstone, Esther chose a line from one of Eva’s poems:
> 
> Sappho was right:  
>  **Life that is Love is God,** and Mercy wise  
>  Is that which never dies —  
> Life, Love and Light.
> 
> _Swoon._
> 
> **2\. Carson, Churchill, Asquith.** Sir Edward Carson, leader of the Ulster Unionist Party in the 1910s and a staunch opponent of Home Rule and, later, the 1921 Anglo-Irish Treaty which ended the War of Independence (and started the Irish Civil War) by allowing for the creation of the Irish Free State as a dominion of British Commonwealth, and solidifying the partitioning of the Island into the Free State and Northern Ireland. In 1895, Carson served as the barrister for the Marquess of Queensbury in the Oscar Wilde trials, leading a fairly vicious defence which, as we know, ended with Wilde being convicted of gross indecency and sentenced to two years’ hard labour. 
> 
> Yes, that Churchill: in 1920, Winston Churchill was the British Secretary of State for War, and was instrumental in the decision to send the Auxiliary and Black & Tan forces to Ireland as paramilitary support. In 1916, he would have been a sitting MP but only recently back from the Front, and not yet quite as important as he would become.
> 
> Herbert Henry Asquith was the sitting Prime Minister in 1916; prior to that he introduce the Third Irish Home Rule Bill, that which Carson so opposed, which was shelved upon the advent of World War One. I don’t know if we’d call him pro-Home Rule so much as politically savvy and in need of the Irish vote.
> 
>  **3\. “Another lockout?”** The labour lockout of 1913, a months-long labour union strike across multiple trades in Dublin. Much of the credit for the organisation and vision is given to James Larkin and James Connolly (who was executed after the Rising), two of Ireland’s most influential socialist labour leaders.
> 
>  **4\. I thought, after today…** The Rising was originally to start on Easter Sunday all across Ireland, but due to a number of miscommunications and misleading information, many branches of the Irish Volunteers, (which would become the Irish Republican Army [IRA]) thought it was cancelled, only to receive the go-ahead for Monday morning, resulting in a Rising centralised mostly in Dublin, with some activity in towns elsewhere. To still know about it in advance, Eva’s sister would have had to have been on the inside of Republican leadership, as the real-life Constance Markievicz was.


	3. To Ireland

_April 1920_  
 _Dublin_

The passage from Liverpool is short enough; Harry sees him off, steady enough though her breath stinks of whiskey, and makes rude gestures when some of the other recruits, boarding, wolf-whistle. Clara stays home. 

They land in Dublin on a grey day and, immediately off the boat, are handed rifles and loaded onto open-backed Crossley tender trucks to drive across the city. “Keep a steady eye to the upper windows,” says the Sergeant seated at the front. “You’re open targets, you are.” The lad beside John fumbles his rifle, ammunition clattering to the floor of the vehicle, and the sergeant eyes him. “Training,” he says, as the Crossleys begin to drive off, “will last a week. If you find you know little of policing at the end, well, you’ll fit in.”

John frowns and some of the men around him exchange worried glances. They do, as told, keep their rifles at the ready, though it’s clear some know better than others the feel of a gun in their hands. Once at the barracks, they’re given a paltry stack of bedding and their uniform, such as it is. Many of the recruits are like him, late of the Great War. The high pay promised has brought more than one man soured by war, and more than one who have long missed the reassuring weight of a firearm in their hands. Others are Irish, the few new recruits not scared off by the continual efforts of rebels and those loyal to them to violently discourage any Irishmen from joining up. As a group, they’re uniformed in a motley assortment of military surplus, khaki trousers with a mix of jackets in black, navy, green, and more regimental hats that you can count, and no two men match. 

Training begins each morning with short, impatient lectures on policeman’s law: the right to arrest and detain, due process, and lawful search. John’s sure he’s not the only one whose head spins at the end, and he looks forward to arms training in the afternoon, paltry though it may be. Each man learns on Lee-Enfield rifles and short-barrelled Webley revolvers, weapons familiar enough to John and his fellow former infantry men that the task of instruction often falls on them. Grenades and Vickers machine guns and the short, round-magazined Lewis guns fill out their armoury; though the basic operation is easily grasped, for many a mere seven days proves too short to master anything like aim or strategy. 

Though the the grip of a revolver, the recoil of a rifle, the smooth pull of a trigger is familiar to him after four long years, John finds his hand less reliable than before. It quakes unnaturally and sends his bullets wayward; it is only with a deep and onerous concentration that he can bring his aim true. He grits his teeth under the watchful eye of the sergeant and, with effort, manages to accomplish work that, if not impressive, at least does not embarrass. 

Their last lecture at the end of the scant week’s training, delivered by a red-cheeked, ginger Lieutenant-Colonel who addresses them in a booming Sheffield accent, leaves them in little doubt as to their status in Ireland. “You will fight alongside Irishmen who dislike you, against Irishmen who hate you,” he starts, leaving the recruit sitting next to John — Healy, his name was, and he’d volunteered with friendly cheer that his family haled from Carrickfergus — shifting uneasily in his seat. 

“Your enemy knows the land better; they have the support of the people; and they have that which all men should fear: the righteous anger of a people who feel they’ve been wronged. They fight against all that the order of our country — that our King — represents. So I say —” He pauses, rising up on his toes; enough to make some of the cadets in the front row shrink back, just a bit. “I say, give ‘em hell, boys! Give ‘em hell!” An unsteady cheer goes up; John stays quiet.

They file out and receive their orders. John’s to County Cork, to a town tucked away in a bend of the River Lee, along with Ralph Hughes, a jovial Mancunian a few years John’s senior. The journey takes a day and a half by train, eight hours wasted when the train falls to a stop, the crew refusing to transport them. It takes persuasion at the end of a gun barrel to move the train along, and by then the men aboard are vile-tempered and short to anger. John stays silent, knowing already that this delay is nothing like the standard frustrations he’s known of wartime troop movement. They’re moving behind enemy lines, now, in territory claimed and declared and known disproportionately by those against them.

++

John and Hughes settle into the barracks quickly enough; theirs is one of the smaller battlements, little more than an ordinary townhouse, home to half a dozen constables and a senior sergeant. Macroom, their small and picturesque town, is of import less for its RIC, which are a mere support to the County Inspector housed in Cork city proper, than for the company of Auxiliaries housed in the castle. Tudor’s Toughs, they’re called, and they’re nominally gentlemen and officers. C Company, though, is less known for its strict policing than for its general fondness for drink, petty raids, and the occasional garden party.

On duty, the work of the RIC is largely the monotony of patience, ill-tempered and uneasy though it may be, punctuated by the occasional raid or arrest. The superior officer in Macroom, Sergeant Danielson, is a wry-faced man with a general weary acceptance of their daily annoyances: he meets blockaded roads and strike-delayed trains and the long resultant detours with the same unimpressed acquiescence, even as some of the younger constables — and John, too, if he’s being honest — gripe and whinge and generally carry on.

Days out are most often spent in the pub, where their money is grudgingly accepted and their seats given wide berth. Occasionally, though, invitations will arrive for afternoon tea at one of the many local country houses, and some of the luckier – and more well-connected – officers will enjoy a day of being entertained by Ireland’s most eligible aristocratic maidens. On the whole, the constables like John are left to drink, gamble, and otherwise ramble the countryside as they see fit.

One such day, John is ducking out of the barracks, his week’s pay in his pocket and ready to wager, when he bodily runs into Colonel Smyth. “Ah, Watson, just the chap I was looking for.”

“Sir?”

“I’ve an invitation to attend – one of those wee country house fetes – and damned if the lad that usually drives me hasn’t scarpered. You’re a good sort, you don’t mind, do you?”

“I – um –” John attempts to manufacture an excuse — it’s not strictly within his duties — but Smyth presses on.

“Come, now, it’s not far, and there’s sure to be tea in the kitchen. These Irish maids, too, fresh like country roses and just as easy to pluck.” Smyth has the broad, tanned face of a career soldier; he has a decade or so on John and treats Ireland like a holiday. As commander of C Company, he remains on friendly enough, if slightly stilted, terms with the RIC and the Tans, even managing to charm some of the locals. His service in the Great War left him well-decorated and missing one arm; his empty sleeve, perpetually pinned up, nonetheless fails to hinder his imposing figure. 

John opens then closes his mouth, unsure if consent to drive includes tacit agreement with Smyth’s assessment of the local girls. He’s not one to be prudish, but – “I suppose, sir, yes, of course.”

“Good, good. Good lad.” John isn’t eager to remind the Colonel how much money John had won off him the last time they’d played in the same round of poker. 

The drive isn’t long; the house – “Norbury, queer name for an Irish house, but that’s the Irish for you” – nestled in a crook of the River Lee, has the quietly crumbling air of an estate nearly gone to seed. Though the bricks surrender to gravity and age a bit at the corners and the roof is green with moss, the grounds look neatly maintained, and the butler who meets Smyth at the door well-pressed. He motions John off around the rear of the house, and John drives with careful precision across the raked gravel and parks the motor in front of a half-collapsed stable, uncertain of its stability as a garage.

He’s looking for the servant’s entrance, to see if there’s tea to be had, when one of the upper windows of the stable is thrown open, with such force that the thick wooden shutters bounce back off the stone. “You’ll not find any hospitality that way,” a voice calls out. John shields his eyes from the weakly glaring sun and looks up. He registers a dishevelled head of curls disappearing back inside before he calls back.

“What’s that?”

The door clatters open as, stooping under the ancient lintel, a man steps out. He wears dark trousers, shiny at the knees and too big, like they’ve been borrowed or passed down, and is in shirtsleeves, collar and cuffs missing. He flips his braces back up to his shoulders from where they had hung at his hips as he straightens and John blinks; he’d rather thought him a man, his age or older, based on the deep voice and slim, graceful height, and is surprised to see the slightly peevish and angular face of a young man – a boy, really, eighteen or nineteen.

“There’s no refreshment in the kitchen,” the boy says, and John’s brow furrows. “We haven’t any servants, you know.”

“But at the door, the –”

“Oh, Maxwell,” the boy says, with a fey, affected wave of his hand. “He’s a holdover from Father, but the rest have been gone for ages. We have a girl in to clean once a week, but she’s English, so she’ll come.”

“The local folk won’t work for you?” John asks, puzzled. From what Smyth had said on the way over, most of these old families were so interbred with the Irish and the land as to not be hardly considered English any more. _‘Gone native,’_ he’d said, with a rough, throaty laugh.

The boy glares at him with undisguised disgust, as though he’d said something unbearably stupid. “Not since your lot arrived. Though, the lack of wages and Mummy’s ways –” he broke off, glancing up at the house. “It was hardly a surprise,” he finished, “to anyone who bothered to _look.”_

“I –” John blinks, uncertain how to respond, and the boy sweeps past him and around the corner to open the door to the servant’s entrance John had sought. He clatters up the back stairs, John following warily, and pushes through a door, and suddenly they’re in the main hall. John stops. “I don’t –”

“Nonsense,” the boy responds. “You’re coming to tea. It’s unaccountably dull, but –” He glances at a door across the way then back at John, then smiles, a quick flash of very white, very even teeth. 

“I’m not –” John glances at his uniform; he’s no officer, and – even in Ireland – there are ways of doing things. 

“Now, don’t be dull,” the boy says, and marches across the room. His shoes click on the parquet floor. John swallows and follows him. 

The boy pushes the door to the sitting room with noisy force; it clatters open to reveal the rest of the startled party, perched on a brocade settle and pair of armchairs marked by a slightly worn Victorian baroqueness. Smyth blinks, bemused, at the interruption, but the woman seated to his right, who can only be the lady of the house, sighs deeply.

“Sherlock, really, that’s hardly an appropriate entrance.” The woman’s eyes are clear and blue, and she opens them wide, apparently guileless.

“Mummy, I’ve brought our last guest,” the boy — Sherlock — responds, his voice innocent. “Constable, this is my mother, Lady Holmes.”

“My lady,” John says, removing his cap and bobbing his head. Neither she nor Sherlock look at him; the silent communication between mother and son reveals John’s place in the sitting room as pawn, not guest.

“Well,” says Smyth, with broken joviality, “the more the merrier, eh?”

“Indeed,” says Lady Holmes, a serene smile firmly in place. “Constable —”

“Watson, mum, John Watson.”

“Constable Watson. Please do have a seat.” She gestures to the last empty armchair; John sits as Sherlock, fidgeting, strides to the fireplace to drop himself to a tattered ottoman. Restless, he taps his fingers against the edge. Lady Holmes studiously ignores him. Instead, she introduces John to, “My eldest son, Mycroft,” a dour-looking man near John’s age with still-round cheeks and a perfectly pressed afternoon suit.

If the Colonel had been expecting to find a bride, he is disappointed, as the Lady and her sons make up the whole of the party. The room is no less engaging, though, as Lady Holmes, a gracious hostess, engages the men equally in conversation about the unseasonably fine weather, upcoming Easter celebrations, and the latest literature. 

This conversation, still rather consciously on the limited topics of polite society, flows into luncheon, served in the dining room at a table more suited to a dinner of two dozen than their own paltry party. As Sherlock had alluded, luncheon is served by the same ancient butler, who gives a short – and perhaps slightly sardonic – bow to John’s murmured thanks. 

Halfway through the meal, Lady Holmes turns to John with a determined look in her eye. “And how are you finding Ireland, Constable Watson?”

“I, um, very fine, ma’am. It’s calm,” he adds, “quiet. Not the, um, troubles –” he still finds that euphemistic term insufficient, but it seems appropriate given the company – “but the countryside. It’s lovely, though, truly.”

Lady Holmes hums her agreement. “I’m sure it’s quite dull for you city boys, our quaint little villages and green meadows. Have you spent time in the city?”

Though Cork is a mere stone’s throw away, the city can only mean Dublin. “Not since I arrived, ma’am. Our time off is limited.”

“A shame. We go to opening nights at the Abbey regularly, of course. And then there are the galleries. So much, really, to do in the city these days, one need hardly go to London!”

John catches a soft, annoyed sigh from down the table – Mycroft, if he’d had to wager, but he doesn’t look to check – and stifles a smile. 

“The Abbey’s good, if provincial,” Smyth chimes in. “Shaw, Synge, Yeats – they all cut their teeth there. The Irish do know how to weave a tale, I will give you that.”

“See?” Lady Holmes says, pleased. She ignores the dig. “We Irish aren’t all heathens.” John looks at her, startled. Across the table, Mycroft looks pained.

“Mummy, we’re hardly –” he starts, before Lady Holmes fixes him with a stare.

“Constable Watson,” she says, still looking at her eldest son, “Norbury has been my family’s home for five generations. I was born within these very walls. Surely that entitles me to claim my birthright from Hibernia.” Her gaze, finally, slides over to John, who straightens his shoulders uncomfortably. 

“I, um – I’m sure I don’t, um –”

“Mummy fancies herself a child of the aes sídhe,” Mycroft says impassively. “The fairy-folk. Myths and childish stories; no place outside of a nursery.”

Lady Holmes snorts a short laugh, unperturbed. “And my son thinks himself English.” She picks up her fork and begins to delicately separate her fish, removing the head with one neat twist of her wrist.

“Yes, how is that working out for you?” Sherlock asks Mycroft, who colours slightly but ignores him. 

“Do you work in London, then, my boy?” Smyth asks jovially. Mycroft purses his lips, perhaps at the familiarity, but nods.

“I occupy a minor position in the government. Liaising.” 

“Ah!” Something in that reticent description catches Smyth’s attention, and he and Mycroft are soon engaged in a lively, if slightly one-sided conversation, leaving John to talk to Lady Holmes, as Sherlock seems to have gone back to ignoring the table. She’s engaging, if a bit dreamy, and the luncheon passes quickly. 

Sherlock leaves his seat impatiently as soon as pudding’s been served and John watches from the window as he hits around a croquet ball. From John’s vantage, it seems Sherlock is playing to no real croquet rules, but he makes careful study of each time the ball lands. 

Once luncheon is adjourned, Smyth immediately engages Lady Holmes, murmuring something about, “That delightful Miss Wesley who was so charming on my last visit,” and Mycroft disappears, so it’s all too easy for John to slip out the garden doors and find Sherlock.

By the time John reaches the lawn, Sherlock has abandoned his play and sprawled on the grass, one arm tucked under his head, eyes closed against the pale sunlight. It’s cool out and the grass is slightly damp; John feels a bit foolish standing above Sherlock, about whom, he realises quite quickly, he knows nothing.

“Croquet, then. Are you a sportsman?” John asks, feeling deplorably like someone’s elderly uncle, unable to converse at a level appropriate to someone younger than him by even a few years.

Sherlock snorts. “Most murders are opportunistic, making use of objects at hand for weapons.”

“I – that’s –”

“I was merely testing force at various velocities. Hardly scientific, and it would be better if I had human specimens upon which to practice, but mortuaries are ever so intransigent.”

“I suppose, yes.” John’s not entirely sure what other answer to give.

An uneasy silence presses for a few moments until Sherlock asks suddenly, “Ypres or Amiens?”

“What?”

“Your injury.”

“I – oh. Ypres. How did you –”

“You’re an ex-soldier, it’s the most likely occupation for any of the special constabulary, but you confirm it through your deportment. You know a smattering of French, but only conversational, as evidenced by the pieces you followed when Mycroft quoted Voltaire earlier. A likely explanation is time spent in France. Western front, then. 

“Now, your injury. Wound to the upper right thigh, healed enough to allow you to return to duty and retain a range of motion and balance, but pains you slightly still as you continue to favour the left. The RIC’s desperate for recruits, so they’d be willing to overlook a still-healing injury, but not a chronic one, which would put you too much at risk. So, injured very near the end of the war, most probably in one of the final sites to have continual conflict. Ypres or Amiens being the two most likely; law of averages.”

John blinks. Amazing, that was, if not exactly precise in the specifics. “Brilliant,” he says, because it is.

“Really?” Sherlock opens his eyes to peer at John.

“Yes, really, quite extraordinary.”

“Hmm. That’s not what people usually say.”

“What do they usually say?”

“Feck off, if they’re from the village. If they’re one of Mummy’s cronies, they usually just leave the room quietly then avoid me.”

John snorts. “Can’t have anything to do with your delivery, surely?” Sherlock just looks at him, and John shakes his head.

“It was just at the end,” Sherlock says, “your injury.”

“Oh yes, weeks only.” John laughs ruefully. “All that fighting and I didn’t even get to celebrate the finish. Did you follow the battles, then?” If he’d been younger, himself, and out of the fighting, he could see the appeal of charting the news – such as it were – with maps and tin soldiers and wide-eyed dreams of glorious combat. 

“No – I – Father. He died at Amiens,” he says flatly.

“Oh. I’m – I’m sorry,” John says, but Sherlock’s eyes stay impassive, no emotion clouding the shrewd stare. 

“It’s – fine. He wasn’t – I was at school, most of the time. Then Oxford, just there at the end. I’d just started,” he says, curling his chin toward his chest, and John realises, very suddenly, that that is as close to a war as this boy has ever been, even this one being fought on his doorstep.

“Oh. Mycroft?” He asks because he somehow can’t picture the fussy young man in a dirty uniform, crawling on his elbows and legs across the battle plain, through mud and blood and viscera and vomit and piss. 

Sherlock’s lip quirks up slightly, as if imagining the same picture. “Mycroft’s not the sort you send to war,” he says, “he’s the sort who tells you where the war should go.”

“Oh,” John says, and wonders at Mycroft’s _minor position in the government._

“Don’t ask him about it,” Sherlock says. “He’ll bore you positively to death.”

“What do you do, then?” John asks. He’s still standing, looking across the lawn to a copse of trees in the distance. He doesn’t look down, but he hears Sherlock shift, the rustle of fabric against grass, and puts his hands in his pockets.

“Do? I’m a member of the ruling elite,” Sherlock drawls. “We don’t _do_ anything.” John glances down, and Sherlock’s grinning, slightly, sardonically, to himself, and John coughs a laugh.

“Is that so?”

“Apparently.” There’s a long quiet moment and, with a sigh, John drops to the grass, crossing his legs awkwardly. Sherlock rolls his head toward him, blinking. He fishes in his trouser pocket, lifting his hips off the grass, and produces a silver cigarette case. He takes one and slips it between his lips, offering the case to John. John takes one; the case, he notices, is anachronistically elaborate, ornate Victorian botanical engravings decorating the outside and the initials _SVH_ in flourishes on the inside cover. 

He picks up the matches at the same time and lights his own cigarette before cupping the flame in his hand to offer it to Sherlock. Sherlock inhales, bringing the tip of his fag into glowering embers, without lifting his head from the grass. 

“University, then? You said Oxford, didn’t you?” John asks, and Sherlock pushes himself up, leaning back on his elbows. He smokes languidly, long pauses leaving the cigarette between his fingers. Smoke curls up and away from him. “Summer holidays?”

Sherlock scoffs. “Sent down.”

“What, really?”

Sherlock shrugs, narrow coat-hanger shoulders jerking. “Explosions,” he says, “Gothic architecture. Something. I wasn’t listening.”

“You blew up Oxford?”

“Only a bit,” Sherlock says, eyes sliding over to John. He takes a long drag and taps off the too-long ash, eyes fluttering closed with pleasure. John watches him for a long moment, feeling an unexpected warmth behind his ears, before Sherlock’s words and languid tone catch up to him, and he begins to laugh, then guffaw. Sherlock’s lip twitches up and he chuckles, once, too.

“You’re insane,” John says, and grins, and Sherlock’s smile answers, small and knowing, with a brightness to his eyes that betrays his youth. 

“It’s been said.”

“Ambitions to applied chemistry, then? Warcraft?” He peers at Sherlock, who ignores him, eyes moving patterns under his gossamer-thin eyelids. “You’re not working with this lot, are you?” he asks, wary, mindful of Lady Holmes and her blinking, straightforward patriotism. 

“Please.” He can see the roll of Sherlock’s eyes. “I’m no Fenian. Your virtue’s safe with me,” he says, and blinks his eyes open, lashes fluttering to look up at John. Heat creeps up John’s neck.

“Yes, well –” he says, clearing his throat. Sherlock holds his gaze for a moment too long before John looks away. His tongue feels lead-heavy in his mouth. He takes a final drag and stubs his cigarette out, grateful for the necessity of the movement. 

“What are you, then?” John asks, feeling a bit dangerous. He hasn’t yet discerned how to deal with these Irish – their voices might be the clipped, arrogant tones of every toff in England, but they aren’t English, not as John knows, and Lady Holmes had said as much. 

“I don’t deal in politics,” Sherlock answers. 

“Don’t you care, then? Under whose sovereignty you live?”

Sherlock shrugs, narrow shoulders jerking sharply. “It’s of little import to me; it just takes up space.” At John’s puzzled glance, he sighs and pushes himself up, settling cross-legged on the grass. “My mind,” he says, gesturing, “only has so much room. Room I cannot possibly fill by worrying about whether we’re ruled by King Edward, or Napoleon, Cu Culhain, or Caesar himself. There are far more important things.”

John frowns. “King Edward? You know King George was crowned a decade ago?” 

Sherlock blinks. “If I did, I’ve removed it. It doesn’t matter.”

“Of course.” 

“Beside which,” Sherlock continues, pulling up a blade of grass and peering at it in the sunlight, “there are more than enough foolish men to kill themselves over such worries. They have little need of me.”

“Foolish?” John says, sharper than he’d intended, and Sherlock looks at him, eyes focusing around the blade of grass still held between thumb and forefinger. 

“Ah,” he says. “Well, you are a soldier. Perhaps I spoke out of turn,” he says, conciliatory, but John can tell he means no such apology. 

“Yes, well,” he says, and pushes himself to standing. He refuses to show the twin spasms that run through his shoulder and thigh at the movement. “It seems it’s always the duty of foolish men to die for those who think themselves too wise to do so.” He nods briskly to Sherlock, who says nothing but stares up at John, eyes squinted against the sunlight, considering, and walks back across the lawn, intent on finding Smyth and leaving.

++

Despite a dogging distaste for Smyth’s leeringly jovial manner, John frequently finds himself in the man’s company. This is aided by Smyth’s hosting of card games at the ADRIC barracks, which, patronised as they are by the loose-pursed gentlemen soldiers which make up that company’s ranks, are difficult for John to resist.

One such night, most have either retired or stayed on just to watch the remaining few exchange coin in a fair-matched game. John pushes a stack of coins to the centre of the table and, across from him, Colonel Moran grins, feral, and does the same. Lieutenant Nathan watches, looks at his cards, and folds with a dramatic sigh. 

“Just us, then, Watson,” Moran says, thumbing across his cards before laying down two. Colonel Sebastian Moran has a decade on John, a prodigious blond moustache, and a tobacco-stained grin that he bestows with a miserly tact, treating the majority who encounter him with a good-natured disdain that leaves many unsettled but unsure why. John doesn’t trust him, that he knows, but he’s not yet sure if he likes the man or not. 

John lays down one and the dealer replaces it and Moran’s two. John picks it up — a spare jack, but he’s still two pairs in his hand, respectable. Moran takes it, though, with a straight and a cocky smile. He sweeps the coins toward himself, and his grin leaves no ill will. Despite that, though, John feels the edge of something looming, and pushes his chair back. It makes an ungainly squeak on the wood floor.

“Right,” John says, “I suppose I’ve lost enough to you for one night.” He tips his chin, congenial, and stands. John feels Moran’s eyes on his back as he leaves.

Nathan catches him up on his way to the RIC barracks. “Watson!” he calls, and John, with some reluctance, slows to let the other man fall in. 

“Fair game tonight,” he begins, benignly. John nods, holding his hands behind him as they make their way down the street. “Smyth mentioned that you accompanied him to Norbury.”

“I — yes,” John answers, surprised by Nathan’s inquiry. “Just for tea —”

“Yes, I — I thought I’d ask about the family. What sort are they?”

Frowning, John worries at his lower lip. “I’m not rightly certain. I was only there for the afternoon; we’re barely acquainted.”

“So you haven’t — you’ve not heard much talk about the younger son, then?”

John pauses. “What sort of — of talk?”

Nathan tilts his chin, looking askance at John before answering. “Just words to — to some of his activities,” he says enigmatically. “He’s a bit of a toff, isn’t he?” he adds, lightly.

“He is the son of a lord,” John confirms, tight-lipped.

“And late of Oxford,” Nathan muses, as if to himself. “Well, I’ve no doubt you’ll see more of him. He fancies himself an amateur detective, word is.”

“I — truly?” John thinks back to Sherlock’s enigmatic way of playing croquet, seeing it in a new light. 

“Evidently. Mind, he might liven up the place. These small towns — villages, hamlets, really.” Nathan waves impatiently to the quiet street. 

“Yes, I suppose.” John is spared any further commiseration by their arrival at the barracks.

“See you at the next game, then, Watson,” Nathan says jovially. John nods; they clasp hands, and part ways. He wonders, briefly, toward Nathan’s words of the rumours around the youngest Holmes son. From what John has gathered, he is unconventional to be sure, but John somehow senses Nathan referred to something other than his tendency toward pyrotechnics. He puts it out of his mind, though, doubting he’ll see Sherlock again soon; his path won’t often cross ways with Norbury in the future.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[Cavalry for Ireland (1920)](http://youtu.be/rSGh959K-zs)**
> 
> **1\. Many of the recruits are like him, late of the Great War.** John, in this fic, is actually the perfect picture of an average Black  & Tan. The typical recruit was in his early twenties, shorter than average, unmarried, Protestant, from London or the Home Counties, with working class background, no criminal record, and good references from the Army, having served in the Great War. They rarely received more than two or three weeks of police training and were sent to police stations which may have only a dozen or so constables total, including 3-4 Black & Tans. What training they did have, and experience from the Great War, was generally little help against the guerrilla warfare employed by the IRA. Pay was very high, which attracted many post-Great War soldiers, as employment in England was scarce, but only about half of the total recruits were still serving with the RIC by the time the temporary force was disbanded in 1922. They were known as the Black & Tans because of their motley mix of uniforms, made up of what was available.
> 
>  **2\. Tudor’s Toughs, they’re called, and they’re nominally gentlemen and officers.** The Auxiliary Division of the RIC (ADRIC, the Auxiliaries, or the Auxies), were the other temporary force sent along with the Black  & Tans. So called because they were the brainchild of Major-General Tudor. While the B&Ts were largely enlisted men, the Auxiliaries were generally officers, and retained the British military ranks for their work in Ireland. They were generally considered to be the toughest, most brutal, of the British recruits in Ireland; one historian suggested that ADRIC was a haven for “fractured personalities whose maladjustments found temporary relief in the 1914-18 War and whose outward stability depended on the psychic reassurance of a khaki tunic on their back and a Webley .455 at their hip.”
> 
> C Company did in fact reside at Macroom Castle, in Co. Cork; Colonel Smyth, here, is based off of two real men: Lt-Col Gerald Smyth and Col. Buxton Smith. Smyth, who had in fact lost an arm in WWI, was the Divisional Commissioner of the RIC for Munster. He had a reputation for being bloodthirsty and hard-headed, and was killed by the IRA in July 1920, while the actual historical commander of C Company, Col. Buxton Smith, seems like a much more likable person.


	4. Norbury Revisited

_November 1918_  
 _Oxford_

Sherlock follows the war. Not drawing pins in a map tacked on his wall, but a delicate schematic tucked into a corner of his mind. Troop movements, front offensives, charges, retreats: facts, figures. Data on Father’s position comes weeks late and third-hand, through Mummy or Mycroft by way of the censors and the much-interrupted wartime post. 

The 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards: they started the war, and they meant to finish it. Not Father, of course; he had still been in the House of Lords until 1916, when his largely ceremonial rank became of greater import, and he volunteered to serve.

Though he never asked, Sherlock suspects Lord Holmes’s fit of nationalist pique had something to do with the Rising and a pulling away from the lilt-tongued wife who gave him his title, his land, when he was a mere second son in England. 

So it is that Armistice comes and goes, and Sherlock still does not hear of his father’s death for a fortnight. Mycroft comes up from London; he tracks Sherlock down in the biology laboratory, where Sherlock flays open a stillborn calf acquired from one of the farmers whose land borders the town. He knows, objectively, that his fellow scholars find it eccentric, bordering on strange, that he maintains his habit of rambling through the countryside — seemingly a distinctly Irish habit — but he’s made invaluable contacts amongst the farming communities. 

It would be impressive, that Mycroft finds him, for by rights Sherlock should be in his Latin tutorial, but beyond the usefulness of the Latin scientific nomenclature system, he has little regard for the language; that much has not changed. But it’s Mycroft, and therefore unimpressive and highly irritating. 

Sherlock’s hand, holding the scalpel, stills when he hears his brother’s footsteps. He’s had a new pair of brogues made, within the last two weeks. So much for patriotic rationing. Sherlock refuses to look up, forcing Mycroft to break the silence first.

Break it he does; despite his diplomatic aspirations, Mycroft has never believed in giving news gently to his brother. Perhaps because he knows that Sherlock has little time and even littler respect for platitudes or perhaps he recognises that a truth told gently is still as true, and therefore devastating, as one told brusquely. 

“Father’s dead,” he says, and Sherlock lifts the scalpel away from the calf’s flesh a centimetre, waiting. “Amiens,” Mycroft continues. “There was a mistake with the roster; I only received the information yesterday.”

“Not so omniscient, then, are you?” Sherlock says, bitingly. He is ashamed to notice his hand trembling, and he slaps the scalpel down on the table to hide the fact. Mycroft waits; when Sherlock looks up, finally, Mycroft’s face is grey. “Dead,” Sherlock says, not a question, and Mycroft says, “Yes.”

“There will be a funeral,” he continues. “Well — a service. In Cork. Mummy will expect you.”

“It’s the middle of term,” Sherlock says, like he cares about such things, and Mycroft merely looks at him until he sighs and nods. Sherlock presses the balls of his palms against the edge of the table, leaning, and looks down at the calf. Its viscera shimmers, slightly, in the yellowed electric light. Mycroft taps one finger against the metal table, the only indication of any emotion, and leaves. 

Once the door swings shut behind him, Sherlock leans against the table, pressing his palms against the sharp edge until it bites, and breathes deep gulps of formaldehyde-heavy air until his lungs burn.

++

There’s no body to hold a wake, but Mummy still hangs the black and stops the clocks. The silence of the old house unnerves, and even the echos of Sherlock’s footsteps seem muffled, dampened as they are by the heavy mourning cloth covering the windows and mirrors. December creeps near, and the lawn is a patchwork of green and brown and grey, and the stripped-bare trees reach their spindly branches to the sky; were Sherlock a poet, he would find the world in mourning with him.

For he mourns: unexpectedly, he finds his thoughts returning, again and once more, to his father. A shadow-figure in Sherlock’s memories of his childhood, he knows his father less through his presence than through his absence. His mother’s words, forgiving and distant, Mycroft’s emulation as a youth and growing disdain as a man, the townsfolk’s pointedly polite deference. 

All he knows of his father empirically are the bees. The hives that sprawl across the back lawn of Norbury, in the shade of the woods, and fill the larder of the estate and its tenants with the best honey in Munster. Father’s one indulgence, they were tended with care and patience by Lord Holmes and later, by Sherlock. His memories of his father exist through the hazy mesh of the beekeeper’s helmet. 

It’s to the hives he now retreats, away from the visitors offering condolences, away from Mycroft, whose somber mourning suit only emphasises the pallor of his cheeks, away from Mummy, who offers each visitor whiskey instead of tea and whose pink cheeks reveal her own indulgence. Sherlock can hear Mycroft’s voice, again, telling her sternly that this is no keening wake, to behave herself. 

The apiculture equipment is stored in a neat shed at the corner of the lawn, and from it Sherlock emerges wearing a smock jacket and veiled helmet; the gloves he used to use are too small, so he fits his hands into Father’s, which are too broad by half but will do the job. 

The bees are quiet, their winter drowsiness silencing the hives, and Sherlock has no task to undertake, really, but he pulls out each drawer methodically and peers down at their lazy forms. They have such purpose, even in their quiet winters, a biological knowledge of their role in the world. 

++

Mummy holds the memorial Mass at St. Mary’s rather than St. Fin Barre’s; Mycroft’s temporal vein twitches in annoyance when he finds out. The priest of Sherlock’s childhood, Father O’Donnell, has been succeeded by Father Ardan O’Rourke, who takes Mummy’s orders in blinking stride, having no doubt been informed of the family patronage to the cathedral. 

What should, by rights, be a funeral procession is simply the family overcrowded in the newest motor car, Mycroft’s elbows unpleasantly close to Sherlock’s side, and Maxwell managing to avoid none of the potholes on the twisting road to Cork. Sherlock feels his sore tail bone all through Mass, with sore knees added by the end, and by the time he takes the Communion he rather wishes the wine were a bit more generously poured. 

After, they rattle around the estate, disjointed bodies ill-fitting in their own home; Father’s absence lurks in each corner. The laboratory Sherlock had begun two long summers ago becomes his refuge. He takes measurements of the windows, planning to order plate glass on his next illicit trip to London, and makes long, detailed lists of the glassware and tools needed to fill out the cupboards. He’ll be back at Oxford in a day, where smuggling out chemicals as needed is hardly a chore, and he has no doubt that his connections in Macroom will allow him to fully stock his chemist’s retreat once Trinity Term ends and he is once more sequestered at the estate. 

One corner of the roof still leaks, and Sherlock loses hours trying to affix a patch. What results is haphazard but functional, for he hasn’t Eva’s enthusiasm for construction. 

++

_October 1919_  
 _Oxford_

In retrospect, the explosion is hardly his fault. If the potassium had only been stored properly; if Percy Chambers had ever learnt to control his selfish emotions over Victor’s injury; if the terrier had been a little less adept as a ratter, it might all have been avoided. Sherlock mightn’t have done it in his rooms, true, but the guardsmen chase him out of the laboratory at half nine each night, no exceptions. 

It wasn’t as though he cared for the carpet, after all, and plate glass is simple to replace, but the dons took umbrage to the shattering of a certain decorative column on the facade outside his window, and, given his history, it was seen as the last of a series of wilful disobedience. Sherlock sees it as the inevitable chafe of independent scholarly work against the constraints of stifled academia. 

Percy has taken to insinuating himself into Sherlock’s chambers since Victor’s departure, believing them to be similarly besotted. Sherlock considers, more than once, telling him that he thought Victor was far too self-righteous for a person with so few redeeming features, but Percy is, in fact, a rather brilliant chemist when he’s not mooning, so he allows him to stay and give input. He’d prefer the dog stayed behind, but since Victor’s injury Percy has carted the terrier around everywhere with a sense of guilt-ridden nurturing. As if Victor having his foot shot off in the trenches were his fault.

He’s rigged up a covered picnic basket on the front of his bicycle, and the dog sleeps in it, quite content, while Percy attends tutorials and all manner of things. They’ve only had one upset, when Percy made the unfortunate decision to attempt bicycling back to digs after pints at the Eagle & Child.

Tonight, the terrier weaves excitedly between Sherlock’s feet, and Percy keeps up a steady stream, recounting for Sherlock his last visit to Victor’s convalescence home while Sherlock arranges the glassware. It’s finely tempered, he notes, and spares a thought for filching a few more flasks from the laboratories to transport back to Norbury on his next trip. As he’s placing the final piece — and tuning out Percy’s laments — he feels the dog race between his feet and just hears Percy say — “Oh, come now —” before a crash and a sickly, violent spray of light beleaguer his senses, and he falls back, tripping over Percy behind him.

They fall, both, to the bed just as a second explosion shatters the window. Fine shards of glass spray across them — Sherlock will find slivers in his hair, his clothes, insinuated into the fine fissures of his skin for weeks to come — and Percy gasps before the smoke in the room forces great heaving coughs out of them both. 

“Oh, well done, you colossal _idiot,”_ Sherlock says, voice rough with smoke, and Percy sighs wheezily before shoving Sherlock away and dropping to the ground to find the dog. 

“Horatio!” he calls, and the dog yips back pitifully. “Come here, boy.” He crawls on hands and knees toward the sofa.

“The glass —” Sherlock says, giving up when Percy ignores him, and waving smoke away he inspects the damage done. Not a piece of labware left and — oh, blast — his microscope lenses cracked. Behind him, Percy has uncovered the dog — Horatio — and pets at him frantically, brushing away debris, while the dog mewls pitifully. The fur at the tips of his ear is singed, but all else seems in order. 

“Get out,” Sherlock says, and Percy blinks at him. His eyes are watery, too pale. “Out!” Sherlock says, sharper, and flings a hand toward the door. Percy scoffs but leaves, turning the corner just before the house warden rounds into the hallway, face red and murderous. 

“In explanation —” Sherlock begins, but the warden pushes him aside to stride into the room. If it were biologically possible for a head to burst with an ire-stimulated rush of blood, Sherlock’s digs would be splattered with more than just the remains of his experiment. 

“Holmes —” he says, and shakes his head, seemingly devoid of words. “With me,” he finally says, succinct. Sherlock is startled enough at the lack of berating to follow, though it quickly becomes apparent that his punishment is merely being passed up the hierarchy. 

The warden seems to care little for the late hour, stalking across the quad — though carefully off the grass — to knock up the door of the don’s rooms until Professor Deller, an irritable chemist and Sherlock’s don, though they’ve met perhaps twice, lurches out the window to shout down at them.

“Holmes has tried to burn down the college,” the warden calls up.

“Now, surely —” Sherlock protests, while from above them, Deller calls, “What?”

“Holmes!” the warden says simply, and Sherlock can see Deller piece it together before he sighs and pulls the shutters closed. 

It’s a few long moments before the door opens and they’re ushered in.

In the end, the conclusion of Sherlock’s academic career comes unexpectedly quickly. A few heated words; an explosion; a dog: he’s seen better pantomime farces. 

Sherlock packs an old carpet bag; he’ll have the rest sent on to Norbury. He’ll not sleep and the trains are not yet running, so he shoves on his coat, grabbing a pair of gloves from where they’ve fallen into the dormant fireplace, and takes up his bag and leaves.

He walks and walks — he hasn’t ambled like this since his last summer at Norbury — until he comes to Dorchester-on-Thames. The sky has steadily lightened, rosy golden streaks painted over its arbour, and he arrives with a quarter hour until the first train. There aren’t many on the platform, only a few businessmen on their way to the City, and the sidelong looks they give Sherlock send an unnecessary thrill from his mud-soaked feet to his bare head. His collar, loosened, is damp with sweat, and his hair sticks to his temples and forehead. Marked, he feels a glorious outsider, his bare wrists and neck, his muddied trousers stark and piteous reminders that he is not like them. He is not of their small world, with its finites and boundaries.

He thinks of going first to the London house, then rejects it; Mycroft will undoubtedly already be out for the day, but his servants are unbearably loyal. Instead, he leaves his bag in the cloakroom at St Pancras and sets into the city. Oh how he will paint these streets in his mind: their dark slashes, their frantic movements, soldiers and flower-sellers and hawkers of all wares walking the streets like they belong. Sherlock doesn’t, not yet; London’s great sprawling web is still amorphous in his mind, but he will pin it down, will know it. He’ll need a flat of his own, of course, and some occupation, for if he lives in Mycroft’s stifling house he will actually go mad.

Sherlock walks and walks; he takes refreshment in the form of a rather jolting coffee in a cafe in Haymarket, where the proprietress has been conducting a dalliance with the butcher and, with her husband’s return from the front, is trying to hide it, and not well. The husband shouts at her over the counter, and everyone in the cafe shifts uncomfortably. Two ladies near the back stand and weave their way through the tables to the door, murmuring apologies. One has a flash of close-cropped auburn hair; she glances at Sherlock as she walks past and her blue eyes — for a moment, but no — there’s something of Eva about her, but she’s a stranger. 

The shouting has quieted, and around him people shift, uncomfortable with the hard brush against raw human emotion. No one, of course, interferes; Sherlock because of the tedium of other people’s messy lives, others because it’s not done, simply. Sherlock stands, too, and leaves. Stepping onto the pavement, he sees the two ladies round the corner and disappear, their elbows tucked close together, and in the unfamiliar street he feels suddenly quite alone in the world.

There are soldiers everywhere he walks in London. Fewer than during the war, but they walk now, as a whole, with less purpose; aimless eyes and uniforms gone a bit slack, and were it not for the sorrow-glinted eyes he catches, now and again, or the strained gait of a not-yet-healed injury, it could be Dublin again, just after. 

He had, finally, made it up once the rebels had surrendered and the trains ran to Dublin once more, and the city rang tense and angry. On Sackville Street, the windows of the GPO were all blown out, its columns pock-marked by bullets, and all along the Liffey hollow shells of buildings squatted, skeletal shadows of their former robust, imperial glory. The city could talk of nothing but the executions, myth and romance already spilling out and colouring the tongues of all who spoke, and the soldiers who patrolled the streets had the aimless, blinking stares of ones lost at sea, out of context. 

At Belvedere, the teachers lectured like nothing in the world was changed, but there were a few empty seats scattered throughout the classroom, and everyone’s eyes drifted to them, slowly, like grasping at something underwater. The city did regain itself, slowly, but even Sherlock could feel the simmering edge of anger, of betrayal, like some brokered trust had been broken, and anticipation thrummed in the masses weaving through the heart of the city. He’d left, soon after, for Oxford, and hasn’t returned to Dublin since.

He shakes his head to clear it, for London is not Dublin, and it stretches before him, wise and unknown, and he an anonymous figure in the smoky mists of its streets, and — oh! — the promise of that, of becoming known, of making himself anew; it suffuses his body down to the tips of his fingers, all the dreadful pleasure of being a stranger. He’s not Master Holmes here, he’s not the young Lord, he’s not the troubled student and there’s no one to care that he’s been sent down, and all that means that he may become himself. 

The London house, a predictable Edwardian in Belgravia, has all the dour self-worth of an elderly lord; no Holmes has ever fit it better than Mycroft. Sherlock goes in through the servant’s entrance, earning only a raised eyebrow from Edgeworth, the butler. So, Mycroft already knows and is expecting him. It’s not surprising, then, when the baize door is open on the main floor and Mycroft’s voice says Sherlock’s name, sternly, just as Sherlock puts his foot on the first step to go up.

Gritting his teeth, Sherlock turns and walks into the main foyer. Mycroft’s study is just to the left — it was the morning room, but he’s taken it over, his tedious occupation being far more important to him and the house having no ladies to occupy the room with embroidery or whatever it is that ladies take their time to do, in dour London houses. 

“Explosives, Sherlock?” is all Mycroft says, and Sherlock shrugs. “I’ve sent a telegram to Mummy. There’s a boat to Queenstown tomorrow afternoon. I’ll have your things sent from Oxford to follow.”

All stated with such calm, such assurance, as though Mycroft has his tight little fingers in the running of all the world. Sherlock’s jaw aches. “I won’t,” he says, mimicking Mycroft’s cool demeanour as best he can. Mycroft’s lip twitches, hatefully; he’s seen the effort. 

“You will,” he says, brokering no argument, “for you’ve no other option. I still control your income until you are twenty-one, so unless you care to make very grave and very deep apologies to Oxford — which I’ve no guarantee they’ll accept — you will go to Norbury, you will behave as befits a member of this family, and you will attempt to make something respectable of yourself.”

“A member of this family?” Sherlock mocks. “Which family is that? That of our penniless, dead father, or our mother, whom you seem quite content to ignore unless it suits you? You don’t give a fig for this family, Mycroft.” 

Mycroft’s lips, already a slim, tight line, narrow further. Small, pale fissures mar the edges and his jaw, soft and weak-chinned, recedes. He has a remarkable ability to appear to be middle-aged, even at twenty-five. “You have no money and no profession,” Mycroft reiterates. Repeating himself: he must be angry. “And I will not support your indolence, even if Mummy will. You’ll go to Norbury and you’ll keep yourself from trouble.”

Sherlock narrows his eyes and says nothing. At his side, Mycroft’s hand tightens and it’s enough to make Sherlock take a deep, shuddering breath, equal parts pleased and annoyed at Mycroft’s show of emotion, and turn tightly on his heel and leave.

Upstairs, in the room that he always takes, its neat, orderly attention grating, Sherlock strips his clothes and crawls into the bed without washing. He reeks of travel, and he’s forgotten his carpetbag at the station. He doesn’t sleep the whole night through.

++

_April 1920_  
 _Norbury_

The topography of Ireland has not changed, though the rebels and soldiers alike may try. Roads scrambled — ditches and ambuscades and explosions scarring their centuries-old meanderings — but others exist, still, the criss-cross web still tenable. Sherlock knows every road in the county: every house, big, small, abandoned, every pub and mill and mercantile, and though more are burnt or destroyed than before, more houses turned to barracks and more look-outs fortified, they are mere temporary fixtures on the real surface. It’s hardly the first time the land has seen war, Sherlock thinks, and borrows the poetic turn his mother so favours for his next thought: it will survive with the same weary indifference that left behind rough-hewn raths and empty stone chapels, famine houses and forsaken cemeteries. 

Sherlock roams, and learns his county’s stories and secrets again: the barracks in Macroom, once a paltry stronghold of four constables and their long-suffering Sergeant, now has half-a-dozen reinforcements, bolstered also by the Auxiliary C Company housed in the Castle; the Republican Army Column up near Derrynasaggart, half of which Sherlock knows from childhood; new divisions drawn, curfews and patrols, and hostilities which each man bears just under the surface. 

He reacquaints himself with those he once knew, dropping in on Sergeant Danielson once or twice, though the man is preoccupied with this new policing, which is far more soldierly than any before it, and visiting Molly in the village, who pinks to see his face and stammers her words for the first few minutes.

Mummy has closed off half of Norbury — not enough staff, she says, to tend it — but Sherlock still pokes through the old trunks and wardrobes, outfitting his laboratory with forgotten cast-offs. In one, he finds Father’s old greatcoat. Not the one he wore in Amiens, of course, for that, with his body, shall never be returned, but an older one, abandoned with a great slash in the shoulder which Sherlock bribes Molly to stitch up. It’s edged with the golden yellow of the cavalry and is, perhaps, a shade too broad, but it swings rather pleasingly around his legs and has a tall collar he can turn up to fend off the sharp spring wind, so he wears it until it’s broken in properly for his bones, worn comfortably at the elbows and folded at the cuffs to leave his hands unencumbered. 

Sherlock speaks with any who will stand him, though his long-time, albeit tenuous, allegiance with the RIC leaves many wary, and catches himself up on the trials and the gossip of the area: who’s died in the Great War, who has joined the Flying Columns. Who helps, who hinders. The politicking he finds dull, but the insidious atmosphere of a country in open rebellion means that every thought, every action, every friendship is fraught, and he drinks in the knowledge of those ties and boundaries with desperate, thirsty gulps.

The soldiers he meets, however, stride and bluster through the streets seemingly unaware of all but the most open and blatant revolt; they throw coin and bullets around equally, like one or the other will solve any problem, and carouse as though drinking and burning down houses are the mere stuff of holiday-making. Sherlock speaks with them, haughty and imperious here, deferential and awed there, pulling masks as needed, for, despite their braggadocio, they still have true power — the might of an empire behind them — and it’s likely martial law will be declared before long. 

Beyond gambling, drinking, and noisy and ineffectual patrols, a favoured pastime of the temporary billets is visiting the big houses in the area, finding, as they seem to do, the landed Irish to be curious zoological specimens. Though the Auxiliaries are drawn from the officer class, they have little in common with the toffs of Sherlock’s time at Oxford. Nonetheless, they consider themselves a cut above. It’s rarely the cuisine or the conversation that draws them, for not a few have wasted no time in finding themselves a temporary sweetheart or two.

More are coming to tea; Mummy finds Colonel Smyth, with his bombastic imperialism, trying, but invites him nonetheless because of his position in Macroom as the commander of C Company. If they’re to be in Ireland, she tells Sherlock, then making friends is better than enemies. Sherlock’s not as certain, but endures the many teas and luncheons if only because of the way the soldiers’ over-familiarity makes Mycroft tighten and sharpen to some caricature of the landed gentry. There’s little Mycroft excels more at than class division.

Sherlock is caught up in an experiment in the laboratory when he hears the motor drive in. A door closes and steps, heavy but hesitant, crunch the gravel. The driver, no doubt, and a teasing idea creeps at the back of Sherlock’s mind, so he pushes the window open and calls out. 

The man — once a soldier, now a Temporary Constable — shields his eyes to glance up at Sherlock, confused, and Sherlock cannot quite hide his smile as he turns away and jumps down from the loft, tossing the door open as he pulls his braces back to his shoulders. “You’ll not find refreshment,” he says. “We haven’t any servants left.” It’s true enough: Maxwell stays on, stalwart, and Mummy has finally succumbed to hiring an English girl to do the cleaning. Mummy speaks to the girl, who has the pale, colourless countenance of whey, with undisguised annoyance, as though it’s her fault the boycotts and threats have made it more trouble than sensible for local girls to work at any of the estates. 

The man blinks again, dumbly, and he’s so — so very _English_ — there with his uniform, mismatched but smartly fitted, and his prematurely-lined face and his war-limp. He’s the Empire, stolid and square-shouldered, and he looks at Sherlock like he’s the foreign creature.

“Come, come,” Sherlock says impatiently, for he’s rather in a mood to shock, to annoy; he’s aware that he’s showing off, a bit, his own disregard for the rules. The man follows, quick to obey, and is unfailingly polite, even to Mummy’s tight-lipped glares to Sherlock, and _oh,_ he is English. Sherlock settles onto the worn velvet ottoman in front of the fireplace and looks forward to creating a scene. 

Temporary Constable Watson, though, seems unperturbed. Through luncheon, he’s polite and personable, going wide-eyed only at Mummy’s bold little show of patriotism, easily following Mycroft’s display of elitism in quoting Voltaire, and yet he still comes to find Sherlock at the conclusion. 

He stands like he’s forgotten his injury, like in the wide-skied air of Ireland the trenches are far behind him. He’s average height, perhaps a bit below, but his shoulders are broad and his jaw set, stubbornly; when Sherlock says, looking up at him from where he’s spread on the grass, “Ypres or Amiens,” he doesn’t startle. 

“I — oh — Ypres,” he says; not Amiens, like Father, which seems — sensible, somehow — for their sharing the same ground, spilling blood together, would be deeply unnerving. Sherlock rattles off a list of deductions, aware that he is rambling, and wonders if this — after Mummy and all her Irishness, Mycroft’s dour adherence to the divisions of class, his own jolting appearance — would chase him off. Instead, Watson blinks, and widens his eyes, and says, “Brilliant,” and Sherlock loses his words, for just a moment.

“That’s not what people normally say,” he says, attempting to regain his footing, and Watson — John? — grins at him, and says, “What do people normally say?”

“Feck off,” he says, which is — fairly true, for in Macroom and its close environs, Sherlock is the young Lord Holmes, true, but he’s also — annoyingly — a comfortable curiosity. Familiar. Even now, the memory of a youthful Sherlock bounding through town and demanding attention, from those ill-inclined to give it, has left behind a certain tolerance that allows Sherlock more liberties than he might otherwise be able to take. He knows, and encourages the air of eccentricity built up around him.

John laughs, and Sherlock settles back into a comfortable irreverence that keeps that laugh returning — it’s startlingly warm and breathless, as if John’s surprised himself, too, each time, and Sherlock finds himself inclined to draw it out, coaxing it with witty half-truths and rejoinders. They smoke, together, Sherlock aware of his long-fingered hands on Father’s silver cigarette case, and John lights Sherlock’s cigarette for him, fingers short and blunt-ended and the gesture straight-forward, not sly or theatrical or gentlemanly, like many Sherlock’s known, just comradely, familiar.

And then — and then he missteps, something he says drawing John away, tight and stiff under a carapace of soldierly bearing, and Sherlock is left flailing, at the edge of something he hadn’t seen falling away from him, and John steps away, distance between them. Sherlock apologises, the words stiff in his mouth, little good though it does, and the sun is at John’s back as he walks away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week's clip:[Our Exiles Return to Blighty (1914-1918)](http://youtu.be/Eh5s6eiuNFM)**
> 
> **1\. they started the war, and they meant to finish it.** One of the 4th Royal Irish Dragoon Guards is credited with firing the first British shot of the Great War.
> 
> **2\. Mummy holds the memorial Mass at St. Mary’s rather than St. Fin Barre’s.** St Mary’s is Cork’s Catholic Cathedral, while St. Fin Barre’s is the Church of Ireland (Anglican) Cathedral; Sherringford Holmes, born in England, would almost certainly be Church of England, while Violet Holmes, as Anglo-Irish, could be either depending on the history of her family.
> 
> **3\. a boat to Queenstown.** Queenstown, now known as Cobh, is the main port in Co. Cork, and just south of the city of Cork.
> 
> **4\. In one, he finds Father’s old greatcoat.** It would look like [this.](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/02/The_Cutter%27s_Practical_Guide_Part_13.djvu/page78-2000px-The_Cutter%27s_Practical_Guide_Part_13.djvu.jpg)


	5. Scene of a Murder

The next Tuesday, John is summoned to accompany the Sergeant to the scene of a murder. A presence like his was rare in such cases, murder being more than commonplace of late and regular policing often left to the older constables who know their way about the law, but the dead man was well-known and well-liked and the town’s keyed up. Most of the RIC men, John’s noticed, barely know the business end of a pistol, so it often falls to the Specials to act as guards. 

Murdoch O’Connor owned the local mercantile and was, by any account, a quiet, agreeable man. His business was valuable to the town and though he sold to soldier and local alike, he’d not been targeted for any sort of violence, up until he was murdered. 

“Murdering men in their own shops,” Sergeant Danielson grumbles. “I thought it bold enough to kill people on the roads, but here? With his wife just asleep upstairs?” Constable O’Toole, next to him, looks pale. 

John frowns and glances back down at the body: prone, arms thrown out in surprise, back of his head a mealy mess of crushed skull, blood, and brain matter. They’d found no note or other sign when searching, and the door had not been forced, even though he’d died well after he would have closed up the shop. Nothing was missing from the shop, supplies and food still neatly arranged on the shelves behind the high counter. Even the till had been left.

“Pack it up, boys,” the Sergeant finishes, clearly bored. “Another law-abiding citizen of the British Empire murdered by rebel or rebels unknown.”

“Um – I’m not sure –” John starts. Danielson looks surprised, as though he’s forgotten John’s presence. “I don’t think it was the rebels. Sir,” John adds, to Danielson’s stare. “It doesn’t seem to follow their usual pattern.” Warming up and uninterrupted, John takes a step forward, motioning to the body. “Most casualties by the rebels have been killed fighting or execution-style, and most are shot. Not bashed from behind. I’m not sure it adds up. Sir.” 

“Quite right,” a voice confirms from the doorway. They all turn, but it’s not until the figure steps inside, ducking his head under the low lintel, and away from the glaring sunlight that John recognises him. Sherlock Holmes, his hair still mussed and a long wool greatcoat engulfing his frame. It’s edged in the yellow of the Royal Cavalry – his father’s, likely – and is just too broad at the shoulders, but still gives him a dramatic and imposing air.

Inspector Danielson groans. “I didn’t ask for you, Holmes,” he says peevishly. 

“Yes, well,” Sherlock counters, sweeping his coat aside and kneeling to peer at the body. “You clearly need me, as none of you have eyes enough to see what Constable Watson has so obligingly pointed out.” John clears his throat, and Sherlock glances up at him, his gaze dark through long lashes. “This man was not killed by the IRA,” he says, still looking at John, “nor by a band of unassociated rebels.” He lowers his eyes back to the body, gesturing impatiently at the head wound. “This was an expedient kill, certainly a kill with a purpose, but not a political one.”

“You don’t know –” Danielson began.

Sherlock turned on his heels. “Where’s the message? What is the point? Every kill the Republicans make has a purpose, has a meaning. It’s something your lot could do to learn from them,” he adds, and John can feel the men flanking him bristle. “He sold to the Army, yes, but everyone knows he kept the best stock for the townspeople and that there was always food available to IRA widows and children. They wouldn’t have killed him.”

“He what?” Sherlock sighs heavily, standing and walking briskly to the counter. He wrenches open a cabinet and shoves aside a bundle of burlap sacks, revealing, sure enough, stacks of tinned food. From what John could see of the labels, they were a sight better than the mealy beans and bitter sardines that made up the constabulary’s regular diet. 

“Besides,” Sherlock says, gesturing to the shelves. “Nothing was taken. By a band of rebels who, if I’m to believe police reports, are living in the woods and abandoned barns, who are barely supported by sympathetic villagers and impoverished farmers. No,” he concludes, “O’Connor’s death was personal. You’d be best served looking into his family and heirs, not the rebels.”

Danielson stands silent, gaping at Sherlock, before collecting himself and, heaving a sigh, directing his men once more. “Take the body to Hooper. Tell him we need any information he can discern. Search the shop once more – we need to find the murder weapon –”

“A camán,” Sherlock interrupts, and Danielson narrows his eyes.

“A hurley stick, really?” he asks, and Sherlock sighs theatrically.

“The shape of the wound makes it quite obvious.”

“Must have been convenient, then,” John notes, “close to hand.” Sherlock looks at him, frowning slightly.

“Precisely,” he says, eyes narrowed, and John shrugs.

“‘Most murders are opportunistic,’” he says, repeating Sherlock’s earlier words back to him. “It’s not difficult to procure a gun if one wants to commit murder, or a knife even. God knows,” he adds, and behind him someone snorts, before being silenced by a glare from Danielson.

“Very good, Watson,” Sherlock says, sounding pleased. He pulls his gloves back on, striding to the door. Danielson’s shoulders are stiff as he follows. “Find the murder weapon. Constable Watson and I will take the body to Hooper.”

“You can’t — you’re not on the force.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “Please. It hardly requires an expert hand to supervise the movement of a corpse. If anything, I’ve Watson, who’s far too experienced, given his time in trenches.”

John grit his teeth. “Do I have a say in this?” he asks from the doorway.

Danielson sighs, and shrugs. “Go with him; if you can keep him off my back, I’ll recommend you for Inspector General.”

++

Hooper, it turns out, is the local undertaker; his mortuary, located in a stone outbuilding behind a modest row of houses, is quiet and scrubbed clean, the equipment in view aged but in good condition. John and the two other constables commandeered by Sherlock manoeuvre the gurney into the room and heft Mr O’Connor onto the steel table. Despite the exertion, O’Toole’s face is blanched, and he keeps his gaze fixed firmly on the floor, not on O’Connor’s body. O’Toole and the other Constable, Finnegan, have fallen into deferring to John with startling alacrity, perhaps due to their youth and inexperience: a scant two years each on the Force, and O’Toole’s few months in North Africa the only war either has seen. 

Mr Hooper is nowhere in sight. They are assisted by his daughter — Mary, Molly, Margaret, one of those myriad Marian names bestowed on a full half of Irish maids — who swallows nervously when she sees Sherlock, but positions the table with confidence, and, though John is initially concerned, expresses no hesitation at the sight of the dead body. Miss Hooper makes eye contact just once with John before glancing away hastily. She has the soft brown hair and the nervous countenance of a field mouse. 

Sherlock dismisses the constables with an imperious wave and rubs his hands together with excitement. “Now, Molly, what are your thoughts?” Miss Hooper — Molly — pushes her hair back from her face, securing it haphazardly with a piece of twine, and bends to examine the wound.

Sherlock stands a few steps from the body, hands folded behind his back and expression placid. John frowns. 

“Her father’s a drunk,” Sherlock says blandly, as if she weren’t standing there. She flinches but says nothing. “Molly learnt at his side. Her autopsies are passable.” Molly’s lip flicks up at the corner quickly as she straightens.

“Head bashed in,” she begins, with a shrug. “But — but you know that. Something blunt, heavy, rounded —”

“A camán,” Sherlock interrupts. “Time of death?”

Recognition brightens Molly’s countenance. “Oh! Oh, the round edge here — that does make sense —” She trails off at the impatience on Sherlock’s face. “Um…deceased approximately six to eight hours, I would estimate, based on blood coagulation and rigor mortis.”

“In the small hours, then. Well after the shop had closed.” Sherlock paces in the narrow space between the steel table and the row of storage cupboards; his long coat sweeps against John’s shins as he passes. “Why would he have need to be down in the shop at that time of night?”

“Maybe he heard his murderer?”

Sherlock drums his fingertips against his lips, the noise a dry patter that synchronises with his footsteps. “Possible, but not likely — remember, he was hit from behind, arms thrown out in surprise.”

“Perhaps he’d planned to meet someone, then — someone he knew, trusted enough to let into the store — and they jumped him after their business was concluded.”

“Oh, an assignation!” Molly cries, delighted.

“You read too much sensational fiction,” Sherlock says dryly, and Molly colours. 

“It’s possible, though,” John says, and Sherlock pauses in his pacing. “I mean — not a lover, maybe —” he glances at Molly, whose eyes track between John and Sherlock, engrossed. “I don’t think — a woman couldn’t have — but someone he knew, knew well.”

“I agree it’s not a woman, but not for the sentimental nobility you seem to cherish, Watson. In this case, the angle of the blow — near the crown of his head — suggests a downward hit. Now, taking into account the length of an average hurley stick, the assailant would still need to be Mr O’Connor’s height at least. Not many women of such stature around. Statistical data also suggests women disproportionately murder by indirect methods, such as poisoning. Though,” he adds, eyes on John instead of the corpse, “you underestimate the women of this country to your own peril.”

“What?”

“He means Con Markievicz and fools like her,” Molly says to John, though she glares at Sherlock. “Out there trying to get themselves killed for the very glory of it.”

Sherlock blinks, lips pursed together like he’s trying to control a grin. “I simply meant that, based on my observations of the playing field, women, though physically weaker and slower, are more than capable of wielding a hurley stick to lethal effect.” Molly screws up her mouth, seeming about to retort, when Sherlock turns abruptly to the door. 

“We must be on our way, Molly. Please have the results of your autopsy brought to Norbury with no delay. You may,” he adds, pausing at the doorway, “pay special attention to any residue left on his skin. Come along, Watson.” Bemused, John follows Sherlock, the door banging shut behind them.

++

“So?” John asks, a half-step behind Sherlock, who stalks down the street with intention. 

“What?” The wind blows, harshly, against them; Sherlock’s greatcoat flaps behind him with all the predatory intention of a hawk. He pulls it tighter, unfolding the collar so it grazes his jawline.

“The case — do you have leads to consider?” Sherlock stops, looks John up and down.

“Possibly. Much hinges on what precisely Molly finds in his skin.”

“His skin?”

“Yes,” Sherlock says, but doesn’t elaborate.

“Where are we going, now, then?” John lengthens his strides to keep up with Sherlock’s purposeful walk.

“To interview the victim’s widow.”

“To interview —” John repeats, but they’re already back at the mercantile, and Sherlock strides through the crime scene and pushes open the door at the back. John follows up a set of stairs to the neat, quiet flat above the shop. In the sitting room, a middle-aged woman looks up sharply at their entrance.

“Oh! I — Lord Holmes,” she says, clearly startled, and makes a clumsy attempt to stand.

“No, no —” Sherlock says, waving his hand imperiously. She sits again, daubing her eyes with the corner of her shawl. 

Sherlock examines the room quickly, stepping into the kitchen to open and close the various tins and bottles on the one, laden, shelf. He sniffs each before putting it back. “Is there anyone who would want your husband dead?” he asks during his examination.

Mrs O’Connor’s breath hitches and she looks to John for confirmation. “It’s alright,” he says, “he’s working with the constabulary.” 

“I don’t know why you’d take an interest.” Her voice is very small.

“Murder,” Sherlock proclaims, “always interests me. Now, did your husband have any enemies?”

“Not one,” she says, “not one. There’s nought a person I know that’d want my Murdoch dead.”

There’s at least one, John thinks, but doesn’t say. “Had he any debtors?” Sherlock continues.

“Not in that way,” Mrs O’Connor says, affronted. “He liked a tipple, my Murdoch, so there’s likely a tab to be settled down’t Maguires, but shillings only.”

Sherlock hums. “And you inherit the shop, the holdings?”

“My son,” she corrects.

“Ah. Rory. I remember him being a deft hand at hurling. Does he still play?”

At that, Mrs O’Connor lifts her head and eyes Sherlock. “I haven’t seen my son in months,” she says, defiant, and though John would expect pain at such a pronouncement, there’s pride instead. 

“We both know that’s not true,” Sherlock says, his eyes sweeping to land on her. “You send his battalion food weekly, at least.” John swallows; he’s not sure if he’s thankful or not that Sherlock’s chosen him to be the officer of the law present. He’ll not arrest a woman for trying to keep her son from starving, but other officers have no such scruples.

She swallows, but neither confirms nor denies his claim.

“Is his kit still here? His camán?”

She shakes her head slowly. “No.”

He regards her for a moment, then nods briskly. “Thank you, Mrs O’Connor. You’ve been quite helpful.” He sweeps past John, who smiles weakly. Mrs O’Connor frowns but seems disinclined to ask questions, so John follows Sherlock down the stairs. 

“How was that helpful?” he asks once they’re back outside. “You think the son did it?”

“Hm? No, not at all. His parents send him food, supplies — they’re hardly on the outs. He inherits but he’s not around to run a shop, so that’s no advantage.” He looks up and down the street, contemplatively. “I wanted to ascertain if the instrument of murder might still be on the premises. Likely not; Rory’s their only child and Murdoch didn’t play.”

“What now?”

“The neighbours,” Sherlock said with purpose.

++

“Bah!” Sherlock cries, the door of the fifth house closing behind them. They’d learnt nothing new; all who knew him agreed that Murdoch O’Connor was a respectable and respected man, good-natured and fair, and without an enemy.

Sherlock scrubs his hands through his hair, leaving it wild. “Where now?” John asks, and Sherlock looks at him, startled, like he’d forgotten his presence. John opens his mouth, then closes it, then straightens up and says, “Right, then, I’ll leave you to it.”

He takes a step but is arrested by Sherlock’s hand wrapping brusquely around his wrist. “Don’t be absurd, Watson, we’ve hardly begun. There are all his regular customers yet for us to analyse.” 

John tries not to let Sherlock’s voice, firm on the word _us,_ distract. He’s merely there to give Sherlock the veneer of authority lent from his uniform. “A good part of the town were his customers. I know it’s small, but surely interviewing all would not be the most efficient course.”

Sherlock pulls a ledger from an inside coat pocket, flipping its pages open with a flourish. “Surely not indeed,” he says. “That’s why we’re going to concentrate on those who owed him the most.” John peers at the pages; it’s clearly an account book.

“Where did you get that?”

“Nicked it from the shop when I was inspecting the stock cupboards,” Sherlock says, as if that’s an entirely reasonable course of action.

“You can’t just —” Sherlock raises an eyebrow. “That’s police property, now, that is.”

“It’s just as well I’ve a policeman in my company, then,” Sherlock says, with a pleased grin. John narrows his eyes, but Sherlock ignores him, flipping through the pages of the ledger quickly. “Ah! Let’s begin with the O’Mahoneys. Haven’t paid up in — oh, six months at least.”

John follows Sherlock down the street; the man has the entire town memorised down to each inhabitant. It’s a small town, certainly, but John’s still impressed. 

Mrs O’Mahoney, and Mr Fitzgerald after her, and the Misses Edwards around the corner, and little Mary Ahearn, whose Mammy was out gathering the washing, all agree: Murdoch O’Connor was a fine, generous man who will be much missed, and who allowed buying on account and payment when able. Though some looked shame-faced at having their own tight finances revealed, they all reiterated that O’Connor never once pressured them to settle up.

“It seems I’ve discovered the impossible,” Sherlock says with some annoyance. “The murder victim with no enemies.”

“He does seem uncommonly well-liked,” John agrees. 

Sherlock drums his fingertips together. “If only I — blast!” John raises one eyebrow. “I’ve been away too long; I’ve lost touch with the local gossip. This should be much easier for me to —” he stops abruptly, then turns on his heel and goes back down the street.

“I can’t believe I didn’t think of this before,” Sherlock says, laughing sharply. He turns into the pathway of one of the homes, rapping briskly on the door. It creaks open to reveal a child of eight or nine, holding a squalling baby. Her eyes widen, but she opens the door and steps to one side.

“Mr Sherlock,” she says, with a nod. “Wasn’t expectin’ ya.”

“I’ve a task for you, Maggie, and your brother and friends if they’re about.” She nods and leads them to the sitting room. A kettle hanging over the fire is just starting to whistle. 

“Tea, Mr Sherlock?” she asks, bouncing the baby on one hip. It wails louder, and she sticks one finger in its mouth; the baby’s eyes widen in surprise, then it starts to gum on the finger quite happily. 

“That’s quite all right, Maggie, we won’t stay long.” Sherlock fishes in his pocket, finding a jangle of coins. He picks out three and hands them to the girl, whose eyes widen appreciably as she clenches her fingers around them. “I want to know everything anyone says about Murdoch O’Connor.”

She looks at him in surprise. “Mr O’Connor who died this morning?”

“That’s the one. Send your brother and his friends to the pub, have them lurk around. You tell me what your mother and her friends say.”

Maggie nods. “Mam’ll be home in a mite, and she’s sure to take me on her delivery rounds tomorrow.”

“Good.” With one last appraising look around the worn, but clean, room, Sherlock left, John on his heels.

“That’s your grand idea? Having a bunch of school children as spies?”

Sherlock cracks a smile. “Of course. They’re small and quiet; most adults hardly take notice of their presence. Ideal for gathering information. Maggie’s older brother Ruairi has been helping me since he was five, or thereabouts. They’re a remarkably clever pair.”

John snorts. “That’s the best compliment I’ve heard you give.”

“Children have the advantage of not having been corrupted into ignorance by the norms of society,” Sherlock says dryly. “I merely mean to take advantage of that, before it inevitably passes.”

“Yes, I’m sure. And that — half a crown, was it — was just payment, not, I don’t know, altruism.” Sherlock hums and changes the subject.

“Now I’m afraid we must wait upon the Irregulars to bring us further leads; this part is quite dull, Watson,” he says with some exasperation. John lets pass the apparent fact that Sherlock’s band of eager informants have a title and, in fact, form a company.

“No more elderly women to question?” he teases. Sherlock’s lip tips up but he doesn’t look at John.

“Not for the moment, I’m afraid. Uncommonly good source of information, old women, though. Incorrigible gossips with little else to do than keep sharp eyes on the neighbours. They’re more prone to let slip around the children than myself, though.” John didn’t miss the pained flicker that accompanied this statement. Sherlock, for all his home-born knowledge of the town and its streets and inhabitants, still holds an unshakable outsider status to those whose roots run deeper and more humble.

“I’ll just — be off, then,” John says, trying to keep disappointment from his voice.

Sherlock nods. “I’ll see you before long, though, my good man.” He briefly clasps John’s biceps, thumb skimming the fabric against the skin of John’s inner arm; the release, John thinks absently, comes too soon. 

Technically, John is still on duty, so he makes his way back to the barracks, where Sergeant Danielson greets him with an enigmatic smile. “Make it through, did you?”

“Why shouldn’t I?”

Danielson shrugs. “You’d not be the first to be run off by the young Lord Holmes.”

John frowns. Sherlock can be plain-spoken to the point of brusqueness, but his enthusiasm for the case could only be infectious and John had, more than once, been startled into exclamation by Sherlock’s seemingly impossible observations. “He seems perfectly agreeable to me, though we’ve not made much headway into the case,” he says, somewhat defensively, and Danielson’s grin only widens.

“Oh, I’m not worried on that account. Holmes will solve it, sure as I stand here. He always does.”

“Always? Has he been — um — consulting with you long, then?”

“Only dogged our steps since he was this high. Little more than a bairn, first time he showed up at the barracks, raving about how we’d missed a piece of evidence in what seemed to be a simple horse-thieving case. My old sergeant thought it a bit of a laugh, having the Lord’s wee boy practically deputised, so he made his way into a fair few investigations. Not that we’ve many, here in Macroom, mind.”

John tries to imagine a child-sized Sherlock, still in short trousers, keenly following a younger Constable Danielson around. Despite the gruffness he’d greeted Sherlock with earlier, there was a measure of affection in his voice now.

“Sure and this is the first we’ve seen of him since he left for Oxford. Sent down, rumour is. Shame; he’s the cleverest boy I’ve met.”

“He doesn’t seem to be taking it poorly,” John says, dryly, and Danielson barks a laugh.

“I’ve no doubt he’s pleased to be back under his mother’s care. He’s not had a day of discipline his whole life, not by her or his father, and he’s long since worked the folks about town into his ways.”

“He’s liked, then?”

“Tolerated, more like. The family’s respected, if a bit eccentric.” He claps John on the shoulder. “I think you’ve got yourself a new job, if you’ll have it. Holmes will stay on the case right to the end, but we need at least one man with him when he’s acting in the King’s name.” John opens his mouth, to protest or accept, he’s not sure, but Danielson continues. “Between your usual duties. I’m sure you’ll manage.” He smiles beatifically and leaves John to head inside.

++

The odds are chalked up and the race is only minutes away. John stands in the bookie line, held up by the soldier in front, who squints at the register, trying to make out the names. Finally, the man behind him steps forward and reads the names; his voice is as rough as his skin, which is beaten and weather-lined and aged beyond measure, and his accent, John notes, is of the West. The races are the one place – the only place – where fighting ceases.

Finally, the boy puts his money down and takes his betting slip. The old man takes his place and makes one small bet – his coins carefully counted out – and leaves, flat tweed cap pulled low over his eyes. John’s next; he contemplates the listings carefully, the horses’ names a strange mix of the two nations laying claim to the ground they run upon: Eochaid’s Joy, Duke of Wytham, Moralltach, Pride of Kings. His fingers roll the shillings in his pocket over, and over, and over.

Just as he reaches the counter, a voice murmurs, very near his ear, “Not number fifteen, don’t be daft.” Startled, John turns to find himself faced with Sherlock Holmes. Dressed in a well-tailored morning suit, he cuts rather a finer figure than the first time John saw him, when his baggy trousers and shirtsleeves only served to emphasise his youth. Today, the only hint of dishabille is the crooked knot of his tie, tugged to one side as if loosened impatiently, and an errant curl at his temple valiantly escaping the carefully combed pomade.

John sets his coins on the counter. “What do you know of it?” he says, voice a challenge. Number fifteen has a proven record and he’d seen him earlier, in the parade: glossy coat, high spirits.

“Enough,” Sherlock says. “You’re better off with number eight if you like your coin.”

“What?” John glances at the bookmaker’s lists. Number eight has the unassuming name _Arnold’s Bay._

“Fifteen has a bruised frog,” Sherlock says. “Picked up a stone, I’d wager. Barely perceptible when trotting, but it’ll cost him speed. Eight is in perfect form and practically untested. He’s a good sprinter and – based on the odds – is underestimated. That bias will affect the other jockeys’ performance and he’ll take it all.”

John opens his mouth to argue, then shrugged. “Number eight to win, then,” he says with a wry smile, pushing his coins across the counter. The bookmaker takes his money, impassioned, and passes his slip back across without a word.

“Do you do this often, then? Play the horses?”

“Never. But if you’re going to indulge your predilection, the least you can do is win.”

“My –”

“You’ve lost before, and big, yet you keep returning to the track. You touch the coins while waiting; I’ve rarely seen such a devoted touch on a crucifix. Your gait is animated and you’ve lost any trace of a limp – your humours, as they say, running quite hot. You’re a gambler, Constable Watson.” Sherlock barely looked at John as they wound their way through the crowd, rattling off his observations like a Gatling. 

“That’s — brilliant, actually,” John says, and Sherlock stops, suddenly. The man behind John bumps into him and curses before brushing past.

“Really?” Sherlock’s voice is incongruously bemused.

“Of course it was,” John says. “It’s not just crime scenes, then? That you study?”

Sherlock blinks, then begins walking again. “Of course not,” he says over his shoulder. “If one is to know about death, one must know about life. To know the true nature of murder,” he says, and John swears he can see the hint of a smile, “one must know the truth of human nature.”

“That’s nearly poetic,” John says wryly, and Sherlock’s lip does tick up. 

“Oh, you know we Irish,” he says. “Inclined toward the literary.” He finds a place near the fence and wrangles enough room for John to stand next to him. Their shoulders brush; Sherlock leans against a pole, eyes sweeping over the crowd, ignoring the race about to begin behind him. 

“I don’t think you’ve quite gotten the grasp of watching the races,” John says. Sherlock glances at him, startled, as if he’d forgotten his presence, and raises an eyebrow. “You’re supposed to watch the horses, you know, not the crowd.” 

Sherlock’s lip twitches. “Ah. It’s possible I have a different motive for being here.”

“Is this to do with the case, then?”

A sly grin beginning to blossom, Sherlock half-turns to John. The starting pistol shoots, and the crowd around them surges close, jostling John and Sherlock together. Sherlock stumbles, feet catching in the sudden movement, and grasps John’s forearm to balance. His thigh presses against John’s hip, and he ducks forward, bringing his lips to John’s ear to speak above the excited melee of the crowd. “Betting slips in his chest of drawers.” His breath is hot on John’s cheek.

“Gambling debt, then?” John can’t bring himself to press himself close to Sherlock’s ear, but Sherlock seems to be able to make out the words from his lips. He shrugs. 

“It’s a start.” The horses near the end; John’s lost track of who leads and which horse is on his slip. They cross the line and he’s not sure if he’s won or lost. “In fact,” Sherlock continues, as around them the crowd falls back, most cursing their foul luck, a few with broad grins, “it’s rather fortunate I’ve found you. You can help.”

“Oh?”

With more breathing room, Sherlock turns again, the bar of the fence pressed against his middle back, and surveys the crowd. “You frequent the races; you must know the characters.”

John draws himself up. “Are you suggesting — I hold my own, I’ve no need for moneylenders.” 

Sherlock eyes him. “I’m quite sure,” he says mildly. “But you know who they are.” John inhales, then nods. He turns as Sherlock is, facing the crowd, and tilts his head to speak under his breath.

“There,” he says, jutting his chin in one corner. “Bertram Donoghue. He’s small fish, though, Hughie O’Brien’s the one most defer to. He’s apparently richer than Midas and fouler than Lucifer.”

“Hmm.” Sherlock doesn’t say anything else, letting John continue.

“I’ve only heard of him taking out people’s kneecaps, though, not killing.”

“Well, you’re significantly less likely to receive your money if you kill those who owe,” Sherlock says dryly. John snorts. 

“Suppose so, yeah.” 

“Anyone else? New players, perhaps, someone green? With your comrades about, I’d think money was ripe for fleecing.” John rolls his eyes.

“Well, there’re some I’d not like to cross, that’s for certain.” He glances around, surveying the crowd. “Smyth you know; he’s not a broad-minded sort, and wicked when he’s in an anger, though I’ve never known him to hit a man from behind. Bancroft I’ve not had the pleasure, personally, but know by rumour that he’s foul when in his cups.” Sherlock follows John’s eyes, noting each man. “Not very kind to the kitchen maids, either.” Sherlock grins at the affront in John’s voice.

“Can’t have that,” he murmurs. “Anyone else?”

“Hard to say, really. We’ve all of us here killed,” John says, placidly. “If there were some motivation —” He shrugs. Sherlock exhales slowly. 

“Even you?”

“What? Bludgeon a shopkeep? Kill a man from behind? Can’t rule it out, I suppose. My hands are hardly clean,” he adds, and licks his lips nervously. Sherlock’s eyes track the movement. 

“No,” he says, eyes still at John’s mouth, “I rather suppose not.” John swallows. 

“What’s next, then?”

“Hmm? Oh, I thought I’d make a few rather large and guaranteed to fail bets, and see who all comes to forcefully collect.”

“Holmes —”

“I jest, Watson. I’ve one of my Irregulars watching the O’Connor place to see if anyone comes to harass our shopkeep’s widow. In the meantime, I’ve a few other angles, if you’re amenable to some travel in the countryside.”

“Certainly,” John said quickly. “I’ve not seen much anyway, besides patrols. It’ll be a holiday.”

Sherlock smirks. “Indeed. If pig farming is your idea of a holiday.”

“Colour me intrigued,” John laughs back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[Ireland Has Racing Despite Its Little War (1921)](http://youtu.be/4ldp3AZuyAA)**
> 
> **1\. He means Con Markievicz and fools like her.** Constance Markievicz, mentioned earlier as Eva Gore-Booth’s sister, was active in the republican cause, not only on a political front as the first woman ever to be elected to Parliament (though she, like the rest of the elected Sinn Fein candidates, declined to take her seat) and a member of the Irish Dáil, the Irish Parliament founded in 1919, but also fighting on the front lines during the Rising and on the anti-treaty side during the Civil War. She was also a suffragette and leader of Cumann na mBan, the women’s arm of the Irish Volunteers; she once supposedly gave her fellow activists the advice to “wear short skirts, stout boots, and carry a revolver.”
> 
>  **2\. “A camán,” Sherlock interrupts.** Equipment for the game of hurling, which has a long tradition in Ireland reaching back centuries, and had a revival in popularity thanks to the Gaelic Athletics Association (GAA), one of the cultural organisations part of the Celtic Revival of the early 20th century. Hurley sticks, or camáns, were also used by the IRA as stand-ins for rifles during training manoeuvres, which can be seen in _The Wind That Shakes the Barley._
> 
>  **3\. The races are the one place – the only place – where fighting ceases.** Richard Bennett says that: “Racing went on uninterrupted even in the most savage phases; gunmen on the run, soldiers and Black and Tans, priests and Orangemen enjoyed the sport together without disturbance. General Macready had let it be known that if any members of the Crown Forces were molested on the course he would close down racing tracks all over Ireland. Hostilities ceased for Dublin Horse Show week.”


	6. A Country Holiday

Having acquired a list of O’Connor’s suppliers, Sherlock is determined to tour the surrounding countryside, visiting each pig, sheep, and barley farmer on the list — not to mention the breeders of chickens, geese, rabbits, and — “Bees?”

“Peter Flynn, purveyor of honey, beeswax, candles. His hives are the most extensive in the area,” he explains to John. Flynn is their third visit, after the McBride farm and a tromp up to a lonely field where the laconic Farmer Duffey greets them with a grunt.

Mr McBride expresses dismay over O’Connor’s passing and much curiosity about Mrs O’Connor’s future plans. John fancies him for a suspect — perhaps he’s sweet on the old widow? he ventures — but Sherlock points out that the majority of McBride’s noisy pigs are sold directly to O’Connor’s mercantile after butchering, so he is more likely merely enquiring into continued business.

“No motive to kill him, then?”

“His death hurts McBride far more than it could help; his current stock is at prime weight for slaughter and he’ll be looking to sell very shortly.”

The muck in Duffey’s field leaves their boots slimy and slick, but Sherlock ignores it, leading John up the steep hill to where the farmer perches on a fragment of stone wall smoking a prodigious pipe. A man of few words, he seems remarkably unconcerned with the merchant’s passing. As it turns out, much of his mutton is sold and traded directly to families, so the loss of custom does not affect him as widely.

In contrast, Flynn seems distraught over the death of the local businessman. He greets them with an imploring inquiry as to their progress, spends much of the interview laying praise on the late man, and sends them off with a promise to lend any such aid as he is able. Sherlock rolls his eyes upon their departure.

“Laying it on a bit thick?” John takes a few broad steps to catch him up, and Sherlock shortens his strides fractionally.

“If anyone were tupping the good widow, he’s the one I’d wager.”

“What, really?”

“Well,” Sherlock frowns. There’s something more, but he can’t quite — Flynn had been friendly with Lord Holmes, before, on remarkably good terms for a tenant. They had enjoyed a jovial competition over their honey production, though Norbury honey could beat out any in the county when at its height. “He is hiding something, at any rate,” Sherlock says simply.

Their fourth stop, however, leaves them both at the end gate grinning, with some certainty that they’d discovered something amiss. The home of the sisters McNash, the property was filled with sprawling, rundown barns full of squawking geese, the din loud enough that the entire interview, conducted in the front room of the cottage, had to be exchanged at a near-shout. Edgy and reticent, the sisters answer with tight-lipped succinctness, avoiding eye contact until the very end, when their steely gazes follow the two men right down the muddy drive. 

“Right old biddies,” John says, breathless from holding in his laughter. Sherlock grins, leaning against the stone fence around the corner from the cottage.

“They’ve always been like that,” he says. “Margaret McNash once chased me for nearly a mile with a broom.”

John raises an eyebrow. “Completely unprovoked, I’m certain.”

“Oh, quite. I’d only just borrowed one of the geese — I was planning to bring it back.” 

“Oh, I’m sure.” Their eyes meet and John’s sent off into giggle, an undignified snort provoking Sherlock to follow. “Do you think it’s them, then?” John manages to ask, as he regains his composure.

“They’ve certainly the tempers,” Sherlock says, remembering experiences in addition to the fabled goose, “and they’re hiding something. But it may be something else entirely. We’ll have to investigate further.”

“What, question the neighbours?”

“I was thinking more like — an interrogation of witnesses?” He jerks his head toward the largest barn, a hermetical structure with a large, imposing padlock on the main door. It’s all he can do to bite down his grin.

“You want to —” John frowns. “They won’t let us in!”

“Well — if they don’t know we’re taking a look.”

“You want to break into the barn? Of course you do.” John narrows his eyes, looking back up at the barn through the tree cover along the road. Sherlock sees his gaze wander to the partially-obscured cottage. No doubt the intransigent sisters still stand sentinel outside their home. “You do realise I am an agent of the law?”

“Nominally,” Sherlock says dismissively. John blinks, and Sherlock flutters the fingers of his left hand, waving away his protests. “We’ll not harm anything. I can pick the lock to get in.”

“And the geese?”

“Snug as houses, with nowt but a faint memory of a spectral presence.” John snorts.

“Fine. When, then?”

Grinning, Sherlock sets off down the road. “Tonight. Meet me at the end of the lane at twilight.” John pauses, but follows, catching Sherlock up in only a handful of strides, and his hobnailed boots click softly against the rough gravel. 

++

Sherlock parts ways with John in town, watching as he returns to the barracks to give an update, presumably. It’s not the sisters — Sherlock is sure it isn’t the sisters — but they are certainly hiding something, and by the state of the yard and the path leading to the barn, Sherlock has a few ideas. Though muddied and worn, the path bore evidence of a heavy vehicle, much larger than the sister’s dogcart. 

Putting an unconcerned saunter to his gait, Sherlock strolls up to the gates of the castle, where a Cadet lounges on a worn deck chair. Its sun-bleached stripes are out of place against the stone of the castle and the regulation wool of the Cadet’s uniform. He flips idly through a newspaper, tam pushed back on his forehead. His gun is holstered to his outstretched thigh like he’s a gunslinger; a cowboy.

His eyes flick up Sherlock’s body, over the top of the newspaper, as Sherlock nears. “Have you business in the castle?” he asks, and Sherlock barely keeps from sneering. 

“Colonel Smyth,” he says. “He’s not expecting me.”

The cadet fingers the edge of his tam, considering. “Shouldn’t let you in without an appointment.”

Sherlock tightens his lips, only just keeping a sigh from escaping. “We haven’t met yet,” he says, turning on a smile. The cadet eyes him warily. “I’m Sherlock Holmes, Lord of Norbury.” Well, near enough. As he expected, the man dropped his feet to the ground and scrambled up from the deck chair. An officer, perhaps, but not born to it. 

“I’m sorry, sir,” he says and gestures behind him. “Go right ahead.”

Sherlock nods curtly and walks through the gate. Smyth’s office is in the old keep, he knows, but that’s not what he’s here to see. Instead, he skirts the side wall and ducks into a doorway, finding himself, as he remembered, in the kitchens. It’s not yet time for the evening meal, so the kitchen is quiet, the fire banked, and he steps across the room to try the large wooden door. It’s locked, not unexpectedly, and he listens for footsteps while he pulls out his kit of lock-picking tools and selects the necessary pieces. The iron lock on the door is old — ancient — and it takes a mere moment to crack. 

The room behind the door is dark and cool, and Sherlock grins. The storeroom. Fumbling in his pockets, he pulls out his cigarette case and lights a match, holding it aloft enough to get the lay of the room before it burns. A number of the boxes have O’Connor’s mark, as is to be expected, and a few others have the names of various merchants in Cork. Behind a bushel of potatoes, however, an unmarked cask has been shoved into the corner. Stepping into the room, Sherlock pushes aside the bushel with a grunt, lighting another match to see the cask more clearly. He runs his fingers over the surface — rough hewn, but well-used — and sniffs at his fingertips. Ah. 

A creaking floorboard startles him, but he stays still, flicking the match to extinguish it, and waits to hear another. A cupboard opening, a rustle, then the cupboard door snapped shut again, and footsteps heading back outside. Someone dropping in for a snack. Sherlock exhales and stands, slowly; the room is clear as he steps out, and he closes the door behind him firmly, locking it again with a loud snap. 

Stepping outside, he blinks into the sunlight; his eyes have only just adjusted when someone claps him on the shoulder, saying jovially, “Lost, are we?”

Sherlock opens his mouth. The cadet next to him smiles broadly, but with a flinty edge, and looks him up and down with an appraising — a searching — glance. “Took a wrong turn,” he says, smiling back. “Looking for the Colonel.”

“You were lost,” the man says, gesturing to the keep. “Smyth’s office is up there. But he’s in Cork for the day.”

“Ah,” Sherlock says, trying to sound disappointed. “Suppose I’ll be going, then.”

“Oh, what’s your hurry?” The cadet says. He’s slowly — gently, nearly — steering Sherlock, moving them down along the fortified wall. There’s another doorway, a few yards away, that leads to one of the sentry towers; from his childhood explorations, Sherlock remembers that below the towers a set of stairs leads to an old coal cellar. The dungeons, Seamus had told him, though weaponry storage was more likely.

“Well, I’ve no other business —” Sherlock begins, and the cadet says, “Nonsense! Now, I don’t think we’ve met yet. You’re the young lord, aren’t you?” He’s let go of Sherlock’s elbow and they stop. Sherlock blinks.

“Yes —” he says, hesitantly.

“It’s the coat,” the cadet explains, with a grin. “Cyril told me about it.”

“Cyril?”

The cadet waves one hand in the general direction of the castle, as though that explained it. “He was at the — the murder today.”

“Ah,” Sherlock says.

“I’ve heard so very much about you,” the cadet says, leaning in. “It’s an absolute pleasure.”

“Of course,” Sherlock says through his teeth. He holds out his hand. “And for me, Cadet…”

“Oh! Nathan, Lieutenant George Nathan.” He shakes Sherlock’s hand, lingering over-long until Sherlock flexes his hand, pulling it away. “You’re just like I heard,” he says, enigmatically, and his gaze lingers. Sherlock feels a flush rise up his neck, pink his ears, realising with a hot, shameful burst that he’s misinterpreted Nathan’s entire motive. 

He lets out a breath, surreptitiously, and, bringing his voice up from deep in his chest, haughty and imposing, says, “You should not believe the things you hear.” He tries to look very disapproving, thinking of Mycroft, and something must work, for Nathan takes a hurried step back and says, quickly, “Of course, of course. I only meant that I had heard pleasant things about your family.”

“I’m sure,” Sherlock says, imperiously. “And now, given that I’m unable to conduct my business…” He lets his voice trail off, and Nathan nods hurriedly, nearly bowing, and gestures to the gate.

“I will keep you no longer,” he says, and with a brisk nod Sherlock sets off. He puzzles over the incident in his mind. He’d been so — so certain of the man’s intentions, at first, but — 

Is he so easy to read? Victor knew, after all; Victor first approached him. And Eva had her suspicions. Is he so bold, so, so knowable? Sherlock puts a force to his steps, an appearance of strength, though his mind still clamours. He passes the mercantile, its door shut and guarded, and the pub. The town is quiet, subdued, and though some ADRIC men mill about, they, too, seem to realise the unsettled atmosphere and stay within their circles. 

He turns into the street housing the mortuary and opens the back door without knocking. Inside, Molly jumps, gasping; she wears a blue smock over her dress and holds a scalpel aloft, which she brandishes at Sherlock until he steps inside, where she can see his face as the sunlight falls away.

“Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Sherlock. Quit lurking.” She shoves the back of her wrist across her forehead, pushing her hair out of the way, and exhales. “I’m not finished yet, if that’s what you’re after.” She gestures to the body spread before them, which she’s only just begun to cut open.

“I’m —” he starts. “I’m not, actually. I —” What is he after, and why has it led him here? “Just checking in, is all. Perhaps I can assist?” Molly’s eyebrows raise, tandem surprise, and he spreads his hands, open, in goodwill.

She regards him, steadily, and he forces himself not to shift under her gaze. This is new: her attention, her steady eye. Before — when they’d both been younger, children really — she had deferred to him in all things, but since he returned from Oxford she’s been bolder, though only in sharp little bursts. Maybe she’s not so in love with him anymore, he thinks, passingly. Maybe her brother’s death has shattered her idealism. “That’s fine, then,” she says, finally, and nods toward the basin in the corner. “Just wash up first.”

He scrubs — his hands, his wrists, up his forearms, feeling unclean — having first laid his coat over the chair in the corner and removed his cuffs. Drying on a towel, he steps closer to the body. In the wane gaslight O’Connor’s body is tinged orange, unnatural, and his slick viscera shows between the neat edges of the chest incision. His blood is dark, sluggish.

“You mentioned residue on the skin,” Molly says, interrupting his inspection. She gestures to the worktop, where she’s already prepared three glass slides and set them next to the microscope. 

“Oh, well done,” he says, pleased, and she pinks and ducks her head. He inserts them, one after the other, inspecting each. Nothing unexpected for a dry-goods merchant, really: flour, from the Bealick Mill he’s almost certain; a few threads of burlap; and honey, crystallised and tacky to the touch. Nothing definitive.

Sherlock turns around; Molly watches him, cautiously, and shrugs. He steps closer to the body, and she hands him a pair of forceps and gestures to the skin on his chest. It peels away under his hand with a wet, sickly tearing sound, revealing his ribcage underneath. 

“Is this truly going to help?” Molly asks as he lifts the bone saw. “I mean — we do know how he died.” She gestures to the mangled remains of his skull; Sherlock is tempted to ignore her, keeping his reasoning enigmatic, but her hand is still ready at the scalpel even as she asks, so — “Not terribly likely,” he says, a tight smile turning up the edges of his mouth. “But I’m interested.”

“Well — alright, then,” Molly says amicably. “Only I wanted to know if there was something I should look out for.” 

“Ah —” Sherlock says. “No, not — not particularly.”

“Crack on, then, shall we,” Molly says, lifting the sternum spreader and grinning widely at her joke.

The next few hours are spent in quiet study of O’Connor’s body. As expected, it reveals little new information: O’Connor was hale and hearty to his end, excepting, of course, the bashed-in skull.

“Mmm,” Molly groans, stretching, after she finally ties off the last stitch bringing his chest closed once more. “That was good fun,” she says, all in earnest. Sherlock smiles, to himself.

“Rather.”

Molly begins to wash up, the basin water turning weakly red with the blood, and asks, cheerfully, “So what of your man Watson? Is he a friend?”

Sherlock’s first instinct is to scoff, to deny, but he catches himself. Is that what John is? “Colleague,” he says, instead, which still feels too far from the truth, but he’s not had much time to consider.

Molly hums. “Seemed a good sort, despite —.” She purses her lips. “You can bring him around more, if you’d like.”

“I didn’t ‘bring him around,’” Sherlock says peevishly. “He was doing his job.”

“Yes,” Molly says dryly.

“You don’t like them,” Sherlock says, peering at her. She glances at him, then looks away, eyes studious on the instruments to be cleaned. “The soldiers. Why would you, with your brother —”

“Stop,” Molly interrupts, and, in surprise, Sherlock does. “It’s not mine to judge,” she says, and takes a deep, steadying breath. “I said he seemed nice. You don’t need to spoil it.”

Sherlock pressed the tip of his tongue against the inside of his teeth. “Fine,” he says, after a pause. “I won’t mention it again.”

“Good,” Molly says, shortly, and passes him a towel. “Dry these, will you,” she says, and he picks up the first of many tools, polishing them in comradely silence.

++

Sherlock arrives at the crossroads well before John, having spent some moments surveying the farm, confirming some of his earlier thoughts. The sister’s old buggy is not the only vehicle to arrive and depart recently, as evidenced by the deep tyre treads of two different motor cars. 

John arrives with the setting sun; the air turns a rosy glow and sets John’s hair glinting under his cap, and the green fields around them fall into shadows, lush and dark and foreboding. John still wears his haphazard uniform, though he’s replaced the hobnails with a pair of soft-soled boots suitable for rugby; Sherlock re-evaluates the set of John’s shoulders, the curl of his short-fingered hands, thinking of him as a sporting lad, flush with exertion and striped with mud and —. He clears the thought away.

With the dusk, the geese have quieted, and the walk up to the McNash farm is punctuated only by their soft footsteps. Rather than approach from the muddy front lane, Sherlock goes around the rear to a smaller door, secured by a large iron padlock that proves no challenge to his lock picks and practised hands. He feels John’s eyes intent — on the tools, surely, and impatient with adrenaline, nothing else — as he turns and jiggles the tools just so. The lock falls open with a dull thud against the weathered door, and Sherlock hands it to John, unable to keep his lip from twitching up, and slides the door open quietly. 

Inside, the barn has the sour tang of livestock, feathers and dust contributing to choke the air. Sherlock breathes through his mouth and wills himself not to sneeze, hoping John does the same; his eyes adjust slowly to the gloom, but he can feel the rustle of the nesting geese, mere lumpen shapes on the floor around them, and he avoids the birds easily.

Stopping under the low ceiling of the hay loft, Sherlock reaches upwards to a cut-out leading into the loft space, and, curling his hands around the edge, lifts his body neatly through, landing on the floor with a soft grunt. He turns, looking down to where John blinks, looking up. A sliver of light slashes his face and Sherlock wets his lips. “Come along, then,” he says softly and steps away, hearing John laugh under his breath. A rustle and a thump announce John’s ascent, and Sherlock looks away, not at John’s hands, brushing straw off his trousers.

The hayloft is just as grimy as below, mouldering hay spread across the surface, and they pick their way carefully through the muck. Sherlock makes his way directly to the far end of the loft, to a pile slightly more lumpen than the next, and kicks the hay aside, revealing three unsurprising large wooden casks. He kneels to inspect the barrels; unmarked and roughly-hewn, they, and their contents, are no doubt homemade. They match precisely on the one found in the castle.

“Ah,” John says. “Poitín?”

“Almost certainly,” Sherlock confirms. It’s not uncommon, the heady homemade brew distilled and stored in barns just like this across the island. With the increase in soldiers, who quickly develop a taste for the illegal drink and its potent properties, demand is on the rise.

“Well then. Do you think O’Connor would have been involved?” Sherlock doesn’t think it likely, but as the circumstances of the merchant’s death is the line of inquiry they’re pursuing, not simple the sisters McNash and their penchant for brewing, he considers.

“Perhaps. His connections would be useful for distribution; though these sorts of operations are rarely so organised.” He pushes aside another pile of hay, revealing a few more barrels, and sighs. 

“Do you think this is all they were hiding?”

Sherlock shakes his head. “Maybe. They still might have something to do with O’Connor’s death, but we need more information.” He jumps from the loft, the geese around him scattering with a flurry of squawks, and John follows, with more care. Sherlock lets the door slam behind him, leaving John to lock up, and stalks up to the cottage. 

“Holmes —” John hisses, catching up to him just as he raps, loudly, on the door. “You can’t — this is hardly the time.”

“Well, we’re here already,” Sherlock says, turning on a grin as Margaret McNash opens the door in a worn dressing gown, angry frown already in place.

“Holmes! I thought I told you —”

“Yes, yes,” Sherlock interrupts. “We just wanted to ask about your illegal poitín business. Do you have anything to say to Constable Watson here?” Her eyes narrow, frown turning to a thin-lipped sneer.

“I haven’t a thought to what you mean.”

Sherlock sighs. “We found the casks. All I want to know is if O’Connor was involved.” It would make more sense for them to work directly with the source — the Castle — and the tyre tracks, clearly those of a Crossley, indicate so, but he must be sure.

Margaret scoffs. “That old sop? Far too high and mighty.” Her sister comes up behind her, a broom held firmly in one hand. “Now are you finished?” She seems wont to say more, but quiets with a suspicious glance to John. He smiles grimly, and Sherlock looks away.

“Thank you for your cooperation. Sergeant Danielson will be here tomorrow to take an official statement.” Margaret narrows her eyes, but nods tightly, closing the door on them.

“Do you think they’ll be able to move those barrels on their own?” John muses as they make their way down the muddy lane. Sherlock grins.

“I’d expect their distribution contacts will be getting a visit shortly,” he says, and John laughs. It’ll hardly be a harm, really, a few more barrels of brew under the belts of the Auxies. They’re half-drunk most of the time, anyway, he thinks bitterly.

“They telling the truth, then?” 

Sherlock shrugs. “O’Connor’s illegal activities, such as we know them, seem to run toward the charitable rather than profitable. And old Margaret seemed more angry than worried about being caught out.” He wonders, annoyed, if she’d have feared more if John had discovered the poitín on his own, or with some of his cohorts, and not with Sherlock, whom folks the county wide have seen in knickerbockers. 

“Next idea, then?”

“Flynn seems likely,” Sherlock says, somewhat reluctantly, and thinks of the honey pressed on O’Connor’s skin. “But I do wish your lot would find the murder weapon.” It’s a touch too irritable, his tone, but John takes it with amusement.

“I’m sure we’re working very hard, when RIC agents aren’t being dragged through flocks of geese,” John says dryly. Sherlock snorts.

“You’d much rather be here than sorting through evidence, or, even, out on dull, predictable patrols.”

“Would I? How do you figure that?”

Sherlock stops, turns in front of John so close that John has to rock back on his heels to avoid bumping into him. He takes a sharp, hissing breath, before saying, all in a rush, “You have an intermittent tremor in your left hand and it’s been still every minute you’ve been with me. You thrive on the excitement, even if it’s the paltry thrill of — poultry.” He grins at his own joke, sharper than he feels, and waits for John’s irritation. 

John snorts, and Sherlock blinks. “Very clever, that. How did you know about my hand?”

“You — you had it when we first met,” Sherlock begins, shaken slightly, and continues with more assurance, “and again when I first encountered you at O’Connor’s shop, but it disappeared — your body seemed to forget it — when we moved O’Connor’s body, and it hasn’t returned since.” John flexes his fist; Sherlock is right, John knows he is right, even if he hadn’t noticed its loss until now. “You miss it — the excitement. The danger,” he ventures; he rocks back on his heels, just slightly, as John eyes narrow.

John shakes his head. “That’s —” Sherlock turns and sets off down the lane again. Out of arm’s reach. “That’s amazing,” John says, half a step behind him.

“Really?” Sherlock says. He slows enough that John’s shoulder brushes against his arm as they fall into step. 

“I’ve told you already, you vain thing,” John says, and it sounds almost — almost fond. Sherlock smiles — preens, perhaps — just a bit.

“You don’t seem to tire of saying it,” he says smugly. John snorts and bumps their arms together.

“Hasn’t stopped being true. Flynn, then,” he says, changing the subject, and Sherlock ruminates on his various theories as they make their way back to town, the warmth of the evening generous between them.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[St Patrick’s Country (1935)](http://youtu.be/sQLgsLzCTFU)**
> 
> **1\. His gun is holstered to his outstretched thigh like he’s a gunslinger; a cowboy.** Some Auxies apparently did enjoy this affectation, much to the amusement of some of the veteran RIC, and to the eventual chagrin of those who ended up shooting off their toes.
> 
> **2\. A set of stairs leading to an old coal cellar.** Macroom Castle, the stronghold of C Company during the War of Independence, did in fact house prisoners in the coal cellar during the Auxiliaries’ tenure. It was later inhabited by the anti-treaty IRA during the Civil War, including authors Erskine Childers and Frank O’Connor, who burned it down upon leaving. According to the memoirs of Katherine Everett, a cousin of Lady Olive Ardilaun, the last owner of the castle, the caretaker of the castle very sternly forced the IRA to remove the remaining furniture and family possessions and leave them on the lawn before burning the castle down.
> 
>  **3\. “Oh! Nathan, Lieutenant George Nathan.”** Lt. George Nathan, another historical figure, is an interesting sort. He fought, retired, re-enlisted, resigned from a number of different battalions, including ADRIC, and was eventually dishonourably discharged from the Royal Fusiliers in 1925 only to join the British Battalion of the International Brigade in the Spanish Civil War, where he was killed in 1937. Though he cultivated a precise and snobbish British officer’s persona, he was in fact a Jewish butcher’s apprentice before he enlisted in 1913. A Temporary Constable who knew him in Ireland described him as a “raging homosexual,” which may have been the reason for his discharge in 1925.
> 
>  **4\. He kneels to inspect the barrels; unmarked and roughly-hewn, they, and their contents, are no doubt homemade.** Poitín (or poteen) is a fairly potent and illegal home brew popular especially in rural Ireland. Home stills were occasionally cracked down on by the RIC, though it seems a lively trade of the stuff existed between the Crown forces and locals alike.
> 
> As an FYI: I will be moving over the next two weeks and then launching back into the school year, so from here on out, updates will post **every other week.** This will allow me to continue without any long breaks. Thank you for following!


	7. A Solution!

The note arrives for John in the hands of a local boy, no more than ten, who rides, unsteadily, a bicycle far too tall for him. Little Maggie’s brother, perhaps? Wide-eyed and pale, he looks around him nervously at the constables who mill in the barracks yard; he pushes off on his bicycle after thrusting the paper into John’s hand, not waiting for a response, so John isn’t able to ask. 

John unfolds the paper, a marbled flyleaf torn from a book and creased haphazardly.

 _Conducting experiments - shortly to prove Flynn’s guilt. Come at once if convenient._ John frowns. The note can only be from one person, he thinks, looking it over for a signature. He snorts a laugh when alighting upon, not a name, but a postscript. _If inconvenient, come anyway._

John walks to Norbury, the day being fine and his legs restless. Upon arriving, he dithers around for a bit, no sign of human life apparent, before Sherlock emerges with a rustle from the woods, a canvas sack clutched in one hand.

“The RIC are worse than useless,” he proclaims by way of greeting, and John frowns. 

“They don’t –” he begins. “We’re a bit preoccupied,” he corrects himself.

“Yes, yes, I know all that. But not a one could decipher a clue if it came with a bloody Ordinance Survey and a road sign; with your lot here, you’d think they’d at least devote some time to actual policing.”

“Why do you think we’re here, Holmes?”

Sherlock falters slightly in his step, but catches himself quickly enough. “You know I don’t meddle in politics,” he responds rather than answering. 

Sherlock leads him to the same stable from which he had emerged, gangly and blinking and straightforward, the first day John came to Norbury. Inside, the stalls are piled high with ancient manure, dusty and dry; unused, their broken walls gaping like pulled teeth. To the left, a decrepit ladder leads to the hayloft; Sherlock bounds up it with unconcern for the dry, rotting wood, and John follows with some caution. 

The loft, though, he realises as he emerges through the open trapdoor, has been swept clean, its wooden floorboards free of the dust that chokes the lower floor. The thick stone walls keep the room cool; John shivers slightly despite the sun trickling through the plate-glass windows – a newer addition, he notes. The wooden roof has been patched in places, crescent-shaped dents around the nails bearing testament to the inexperience of the wielder. 

Sherlock stands in the centre of the room, hands held to his sides, and looks at John uncertainly. Stepping into the room, he flings open the door to an enormous hardwood armoire, revealing a great stock of chemical glassware. John peers over his shoulder, examining the collection, which is, against all odds, sparkling clean and in very good repair. Sherlock selects a round-bottomed beaker and pipes John vaguely recognises as being necessary to distilling, then with a second glance adds another flask. 

With John looking on, Sherlock assembles his laboratory; he is surprisingly un-silent, explaining with little flourish each piece of equipment. John did excel in chemistry at secondary school, so the array of glassware, of chemicals and bunsen burners and little flint lighters, is familiar. From the canvas sack, Sherlock extracts a very surprising chunk of beeswax, glistening and dripping with honey, and breaks off pieces to place in each flask. Filling one with water and applying heat, he falls silent as the honey begins to dissolve and turns his attention to the other.

“This feels – wrong, somehow,” John observes, breaking the silence.

“Hmm?” Sherlock’s eyes stay on the beaker in his hand as he slowly measures out chemicals.

“This,” John says, gesturing out the window, across the lawn, though he knows Sherlock isn’t looking. “It’s so quiet here, you wouldn’t know there’s a war just on the other side of those trees.” 

“You don’t say,” Sherlock murmurs as he carefully tilts the beaker into a test tube. He watches, eyes squinted, as the two liquids run together, blend, then, in an instant, begin producing an acrid, choking smoke.

“I – god!” John tries to fan the smoke away from his face as Sherlock coughs violently. “Come – come on!” he says, grabbing Sherlock’s arm and pulling him toward the trapdoor. He pushes him down first then follows, stumbling on the ladder in his haste and falling the last few rungs, knocking Sherlock off-kilter.

“Thank you for the –” Sherlock pauses, bent at the waist as he coughs – “heroic rescue.”

“You’re welcome, you ingrate,” John says, pushing him toward the door. They stumble over each other into the sunlight and Sherlock collapses onto the lawn, breath shallow. John leans over him, bent at the waist, and attempts to catch his breath. Smoke billows out of the windows of the barn.

“Well,” Sherlock says, peering up at the barn, “that was unexpected.”

John laughs, then coughs, then straightens. He cups his hand over his eyes to shade away the sun and looks to the barn. The smoke has begun to clear already; there’s no sign of fire or explosion, so it might just be abating. “You’re completely mad,” he says without looking at Sherlock. “You know that, don’t you?”

“It’s been said,” Sherlock says, smile in his voice. “By many.” He takes a few shallow breaths, leaning up on his elbows. “I’ll have to repeat the entire experiment,” he muses.

“With a different result, one presumes,” John says, and Sherlock shrugs. 

“One may presume all one wishes,” he says with a straight face, until he meets John’s eyes, and they both giggle. 

“What exactly were you trying to do, anyway? How does the honey play into it? Are you thinking of Flynn for it?”

“Possible. I had a suspicion of poison —”

“In the honey?” John interrupts with a laugh, chastened instantly with Sherlock’s unimpressed gaze.

“Or tampering of some sort. If O’Connor had found out…” He trails off before shaking his head, and adding, distantly, “However, even before the — unexpected results — it was not behaving in a way consistent with poisoning. There are few that could stay suspended in the honey without causing crystallisation, anyway.”

“So back to the drawing board?” Sherlock hums non-committally. With a sigh, he drops himself to the grass, spreading supine much as he’d done the first day John met him. Around them, the air is very still, a mere crackle of leaves far away belying any presence of wind, and it’s so very like his childhood, and summer days, and what such innocence he’d still maintained, that John feels suddenly very angry. 

“You’d never know, looking at this place, about the war.” He’s repeating himself, he knows, but outrage thrums through his chest with each beat of his heart. Untouched — virginal — the green estate seems untouched by the scars of time; why should it escape?

“Why should you?” Sherlock’s eyes are closed, hands tucked behind his head. His chest rises and falls with each slow, measured breath.

“It doesn’t bother you, then? Having tea and playing croquet, and, and swanning about when there are men right here, right on this land, who are dying? Who are killing each other over what – what they think is their country?” His voice rises at the end, hoarse and dry and a shade too close to pleading.

“Why should it?” Sherlock doesn’t stir from his languid spread on the grass and the urge to kick him, to drag him and strip him down and tie him up and make him feel something spreads quite suddenly through John’s limbs. He clenches his fists and looks away. 

“Men die every day,” Sherlock continues. “For reasons just as banal as King and country.”

“That’s not what I –”

“Oh, of course it is,” Sherlock interrupts, impatient. “Those men dying – those men you’re killing – the nation they seek to foster is as false as the British Empire. Illusory and ephemeral.” 

“That’s nearly – poetic.” Sherlock peers up at him, one eye slit open. “But then, everyone must believe in something? Mustn’t they?”

“Cry god for England, Harry, and St George?” Sherlock, eyes closed once more, drops one arm heavily behind his head. Stretched on the grass, his body a lithe sinew, he looks an odalisque. Fingers itching, John finds himself wanting to take hold, to shake, to – to press slim shoulders into the rain-softened turf of the lawn. He clenches his hands again and steadies his voice.

“On, on you noblest English,” he says to the sky, and Sherlock squints up at him, blinks slowly, and says, “Aren’t you just?”

John swallows and looks away and doesn’t deny it. To deny is to explain, to reveal. The epithet rides heavy on his shoulders, and Sherlock must notice, the way he does everything, but he keeps silent. John breathes in the still air very deeply and suddenly feels quite finished with this particular battle, so he drops to the ground and stretches out too, head to Sherlock’s feet. The sky above him is a soft pearly grey. “Don’t you, then?” he asks, his voice quiet, no longer tempestuous. 

“Don’t I what?”

“Believe in something?”

Sherlock’s quiet for a moment before he kicks out, ankle colliding with John’s shoulder, but not hard, just enough to register annoyance. “Oh, aye,” he says, voice falling into a stage brogue, “me mistress’s fairer and purer than any o’ yourn Hibernias or Brittanias.” John coughs a laugh and kicks Sherlock back. Sherlock snorts and falls back into his usual cadence. “Science, John. Science and logic and the pure, beautiful application of reason. It cares not on what soil I breathed my first breath.” His voice on John’s name sends twists to his gut; he’s not been John, just John, for so very long that it’s nearly a baptism anew. 

“And you’d pledge your life to her, then?” he asks quietly. “Forsake all others, defend her against insurgents?”

Sherlock props himself up on his elbows and peers down at John. “Yes,” he says, “if necessary.” He looks at John, silent, for a long moment then lies back down. “Perhaps not all others,” he murmurs finally.

John clears his throat. “Good. That’s – good.”

Above them, the clouds drift lazily across the sky. 

++

John learns the news not from Sherlock, but from Danielson’s crowing laugh upon receiving a missive from one of the local boys. 

_Camán uncovered. Honey conclusive. Arrest Peter Flynn._ It makes no sense, but, Danielson reassures John as they set out, Sherlock will have a full explanation. Indeed, he’s waiting for them at the crossroads just before Flynn’s holding, and he swings into the motorcar with irritating grace to settle behind John, leaning on the back of the seats to explain, breathlessly, his findings.

His every exhalation is hot on John’s neck as he describes searching Flynn’s barn when the man was in town, finding the camán with blood on its head and honey on its handle — honey that, with a simple separation test, Sherlock is able to prove comes from Flynn’s hives, and matches that found on O’Connor’s body. The motive, as it turns out, is over money, and invention. Flynn had created a proprietary blend, making use of various single-crop-fertilised honeys to bring together a very complex flavour. Danielson rolls his eyes at Sherlock’s detailed, and, John realises with a deep flush, highly sensual description of the process and resultant taste. 

“It was little more than a disagreement over pricing. Flynn wanted the cost of this new blend to reflect its labour and O’Connor maintained it would not sell. It got heated.” Having discovered the means and the motive, Sherlock seems singularly unimpressed with the man’s inability to control his rage.

John stays behind after the constables arrest Flynn. It seems strange, ordinary police work. Beyond the occasional belligerent drunk, he’d be the first inhabitant of the stark single cell at Macroom’s barracks to not have political purpose since John’s arrival. 

Even from inside the cottage, John can hear the low, melodious buzzing of the bees, and he feels a soft sort of regret for their abandonment. He needn’t worry, however, he discovers as he steps into the back garden to see a familiar form — made monstrous by the large netted hat crowning the slim figure — moving gracefully over the hives.

“Didn’t know you’d still be here,” John says, softly. Sherlock turns, his face obscured by the netting, and jerks his shoulders upwards, owly. 

“Mustn’t leave them untended, the hives,” he says as he steps toward John. In his hands a wooden tray is laden with honeycombs the creamy golden colour of the springtime sun above them. He thrusts it forward and John, after a moment, understands that he means for John to take it. He does; the wood is worn to grooves under his fingertips, the surface polished to a rich gleam. Sherlock removes the beekeeper’s bonnet, his hair standing every which way. He doesn’t smooth it and John feels a low, desperate hope that he won’t notice. He swallows and looks away. 

Sherlock reclaims the tray and deposits it to a half-rotted upturned barrel nearby. “There’s a very long history of beekeeping in Ireland, John.” 

“From your father and from his father before him?” John doesn’t smile, not really, but Sherlock looks at him through the corners of his lashes, and the grin forms despite himself.

“From my gamekeeper,” Sherlock corrects. “The hives at Norbury were quite well known in their day. Of course, they were left to feral after Jameson left the estate, after Father —” He looks down at the tray, fingering a corner of waxy honeycomb. “It’ll be the work of ages to bring them back,” he says softly. 

“Will you transplant these?” John nods his head toward the row of hives.

“The youngest, perhaps. The other’s I’ll tend here. At least until the cottage is let again.” The heavy leather gloves he wears look worn, ancient on his hands, and hang too large on his slender forearms. He strips them off efficiently, lifting a piece of honeycomb between his forefinger and thumb. “Look,” he says, and John glances at the chunk of wax. “No, really look,” Sherlock says, pinching his sleeve — and a bit of skin — to pull him closer.

Sherlock holds the honeycomb up to the sky; the sun shines through it, golden yellow, and amber-like droplets gleam in each cell. “Perfect geometry,” Sherlock says, his voice hushed, “in nature. Just by instinct, by biology. It’s beautiful.” 

John swallows. His arm brushes against Sherlock’s. “Yes,” he says, then clears his throat and says again, “yes.” The honey has begun to come unstuck, viscous, golden beads gathering at the front of the wax, slipping off, sticking to Sherlock’s fingers. Sherlock lowers his hand with one last studious glance and drops the honeycomb back into the collecting tray.

“Here,” he says, holding up his empty hand. John blinks, glances at him. “Taste it,” he says, lifting his hand up so it’s just at John’s eye level. “They feed on clover and sweetgrass. You’ll not find better on the island, except perhaps at Norbury, even in its state.”

The honey clings, thickly, to his outstretched thumb.

“I’m not —” John starts, and Sherlock scoffs, a short, nasal sound, so John says, “Fine,” and grasps Sherlock’s wrist — his fingers wrap full around it, and the bare skin is sun-warmed — and takes the tip of Sherlock’s thumb into his mouth. He sweeps his tongue once, quickly, across the roughened surface of Sherlock’s fingertip then releases him.

The honey is warm and solid on his tongue, sweet and mellow and heavy with the memory of tea and scones — his mother’s — and warm childhood summers. As he swallows, heat creeps up from his chest, suffusing his neck, his chin, his cheeks, until his lips tingle with the sense-memory of sun-warmed skin. He looks to Sherlock, whose hand is still held alight as he watches John’s reaction.

“Sublime,” John murmurs, just loud enough for Sherlock to hear, and Sherlock inhales suddenly, like he’d forgotten to breath. He licks the remaining honey off his forefinger and thumb, still damp with John’s saliva.

“So,” John says, the silence between them untenable and fraught. “What will you do now? Case solved, I mean.”

Sherlock frowns. “I am working on a comprehensive study of local soil.”

John’s eyebrows creep up. “Fascinating?”

“It’s either that or croquet.”

“Well, perhaps someone else will be killed,” John says cheerfully. “In fact, it seems rather a given at the moment.” Sherlock snorts. 

“Only in dull and dreadfully pedestrian ways of late,” Sherlock says, with an exaggerated sigh.

“Ah, yes, guerrilla warfare, how boring.” There’s no malice in John’s voice; needled though he is by Sherlock’s perpetual disdain for soldiering, he begins more and more to see the value in an attitude that chooses to neither valourise nor demonise the war around them.

“Perhaps you might —” Sherlock clears his throat. “Would you care to come to Norbury for supper? I know you do prefer to attend to the needs of your digestive system with some regularity —”

“Most people do,” John interrupts. “Dinner, tea, supper — these conventions don’t merely exist for the sparkling company.”

Sherlock snorts but concedes John’s point. “Well, then, would you like to adhere to social and culinary convention by having a meal with a — with a friend?”

“I — yes, quite,” John affirms. 

“Come along, then.”

++

Dinner is a quieter affair than John had expected. Mycroft, thankfully, is back in London, and Lady Holmes listens to Sherlock and John recount the arrest with benign amusement, and excuses herself after the fish course.

“She has migraines,” Sherlock explains, to John’s worried look. He seems unconcerned, so John cuts into his mutton with some relish; it’s a sight better than what they’re served at the barracks. The dining table is vast, immense swaths between him and Sherlock across the way, and he’s not certain if they could even touch hands, reaching across it. Not that he would — it wouldn’t be necessary — it’s just a passing thought, that’s all. 

“Wine?” Sherlock lifts the carafe from the table, tilting it toward John’s empty glass. He’s had two glasses already — better than anything he’s drunk before, tending to stick to lager — but Sherlock waggles the bottle so he lifts from his seat, leans. Yes, they can touch, it turns out, for his fingertips brush against Sherlock’s as he takes the carafe.

Once Maxwell has cleared the final plate, Sherlock waves him off impatiently and grabs the wine once more, the stem of his glass pinched between two long, slim fingers, and a mere mouthful left in the bowl. It swirls as he moves his hand, painting the cut edges glinting red, blood-like in the low light. John’s chair catches on the carpet as he stands, and he catches it, just before it topples, and feels a bit warm. Sherlock raises one eyebrow and John looks away, righting the chair and grasping his own glass. He swirls the last bit of liquid before swallowing it down, feeling it warm his throat.

The dining room crosses into the sitting room, which overlooks the veranda with a wide expanse of glass-paned doors. Sherlock throws one of the doors open — possibly too forcefully, as the glass shivers — and leads them down the veranda to the lawn. He sprawls on the grass, long limbs loose and graceless, and John stands, looking over him for a moment, fondness curling the edges of his lips. They’ve been in this position enough times that it’s familiar, warm, and Sherlock twirls his wine glass by the stem and looks up at John from shadowed eyes and sighs. His chest moves with the exhale and the moonlight glints off the flutter of the muscles in his neck and John suddenly, tightly, has to look away, to swallow, feeling his own throat move, and drops to the ground where he doesn’t have to look at Sherlock.

Above them, the stars spread across the glorious expanse of sky; their multitudes overwhelm. John’s not been somewhere so open since his childhood: London’s street lamps and crooked buildings mean the sky is only glimpsed between the layers of city, and in the trenches the smoke and fog and flame burned out the stars. “Ursa Major,” John says, raising one hand to lazily point at the constellation.

“The Plough,” Sherlock corrects, and John turns his head, raising an eyebrow. “There are no bears in Ireland, but we’ve plenty of farmers,” he says, and John snorts.

“’Spose so. What’s that one, then,” he says, pointing to another set. 

“I haven’t the faintest,” Sherlock says. “The Plough’s the only one I know.”

John laughs. “Unnecessary information.”

“Mmm. They’re still beautiful, though,” he says, almost shyly, and John murmurs his agreement. His hand, where he dropped it, is very close to Sherlock’s and he could — he could just take Sherlock’s, touch him, feel the length of his fingers and the roughness of his palm and — but he wouldn’t. It’s nothing like the dining table between them, those few inches, and it’s too — too much, too tempting, so he lifts his hand and settles it flat on his stomach.

“Sherlock,” John begins, and the name tastes sharp on his tongue. Has he said his name before? He can’t remember; all moments are eclipsed by this. Sherlock hums, and John takes that as permission. “Why are you — I mean, I know Oxford, and explosions, but — why are you here? You’re, you’re brilliant, and you —” Sherlock has tilted his head, is looking at John sly-eyed and smiling, and John laughs. “You know you are, don’t — don’t preen so.” 

“Why am I still in Ireland?”

“Well, at Norbury. It all seems —” _provincial_ is possibly too insulting, _insignificant_ too revealing — “too small for you.”

“I am bound by the same constraints as any man,” Sherlock says, and John wonders if he means that philosophically until he clarifies, “Funding, John.”

“Ah.” John looks up at the house behind them; it rises, monolithic, nearly blotting out the moon. Sherlock catches his movement and sighs.

“My portion of the inheritance is not available to me until I reach twenty-one. Until then, Mycroft controls it; he’s determined to see that I’ve plans to make something of myself.”

“And do you?”

“I already am something,” Sherlock says, and it’s a statement without arrogance in his mouth, somehow. “However, yes, I would like to become more prominent within my — my area.”

“Detective work?” John asks. Not as a policeman, surely — John knows enough to know that — but private detectives do exist. 

“Consulting detective,” Sherlock says, a bit of pride in his voice. “I’d be the only one in the world.”

“Sounds exciting,” John says, and it does. Even with the — the geese, and the bees — watching Sherlock work, _helping_ Sherlock work, had been exhilarating. 

Sherlock merely hums, but he looks over at John, considering. “Could be,” he says, enigmatically, and only slowly pulls his gaze away. A soft breeze ruffles the grass against John’s hand, his neck, tickling his hair, and the dampness of the soil beneath them feels cool, soft, and has not yet begun to seep through his clothes. Sherlock rummages in his pocket for his cigarette case, and offers one to John, who declines, but tilts his head enough to watch Sherlock light his. The glow of the match warms Sherlock’s face, bringing his lips into colour and casting shadows of his lashes, and when Sherlock shakes his hand to extinguish it, the tip flares in the darkness, mimicked by the end of the cigarette as he inhales.

Sherlock blows the smoke out slowly, angling his lips away from John, and holds the cigarette carelessly in the hand dropped into the gap between them. John doesn’t smoke often, preferring it more as a social tool than a bodily stimulant, and though he feels little desire for his own cigarette, the thought of plucking Sherlock’s from his fingers, touching his mouth where — where, god, Sherlock’s mouth had — inhaling, breathing the same air and burning smoke and — his fingers tighten, fist in the fabric of his uniform. Sherlock doesn’t notice; or, more likely, doesn’t show that he noticed. John lets out a shaky exhale and focuses his gaze on the stars once more.

The barracks have a curfew, but it’s not for an hour yet, and so for the moment he succumbs to the prickle of grass beneath him, the stars above, and Sherlock’s breath, even and deep, filling all his senses.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[Busy Bees (1936)](http://youtu.be/HXHosPfrkNU)**
> 
> **1\. “The Plough,” Sherlock corrects, and John turns his head, raising an eyebrow.** The plough was a symbol of Irish socialist activism, seen also in Chapter 2 in Eva’s sister’s seal. The Starry Plough flag, based on the constellation, was introduced in 1914 and carried by the Irish Citizen Army during the 1916 Rising, signifying, according to James Connolly, that in a free Ireland the people would control their own destiny from the plough to the stars. Seàn O’Casey’s 1926 play _The Plough and the Stars,_ which takes place during the Rising, also borrows this imagery.


	8. Country Roads

_June 1920_  
 _Macroom, Co. Cork_

John stands, one hand on the bonnet of the Crossley, and waits for O’Toole to slide out from under the engine. His feet, hobnailed boots and black gaiters over his green trousers, tap against the ground in rhythm to the song he hums, tinny from under the vehicle. John nudges his ankle, saying, “Finding anything?” He’s being impatient, he knows, but they’re late for patrol, and with the goings-on out on the roads, he doesn’t want to take chances.

“We’re leaking oil,” O’Toole says, the vowels broad in his northern accent, and John scrubs his face with one hand.

“Can you fix it?”

“Oh, aye,” O’Toole says cheerfully. “Only, it’ll be a day at least.” He crawls out from under the Crossley, crablike, and stands, brushing his uniform off. He’s younger than John, having joined the RIC just after his discharge at the end of the war and having seen less than a year of proper battle; he maintains a cheerful sort of fatalism that allows him to accept the world around him as it is, without rage. If he were only a bit better trained, better able to handle a pistol, he’d be a very good comrade-in-arms. He does have the benefit of having learnt machinery at his Da’s elbow, a man who, to hear Liam tell of it, had more foresight than the whole of Ireland in learning the art of chauffeuring early.

John sighs and slaps his hand against the bonnet. O’Toole raises one eyebrow. “Sorry — sorry. I just — we’ve patrols, and with the bombings —” He cuts himself off, but O’Toole nods. 

“ADRIC’s got four Crossleys, and they’re never using them all,” he points out, and John knows he should have thought of that, but — cooperation between the two divisions is not always as smooth as it could be. 

“I’ll ask,” he says, with a sigh, and O’Toole gives him a grim smile of support. 

“They like you at least,” he says, earnestly, and John shrugs. “No, really. They’re not —” he purses his lips, as if pausing to choose his words. “They’re not the easiest buggers to work with,” he says, finally, which is still more diplomatic than many of the RIC would be.

“No,” John agrees; it’s worse for the Irish constables who seem to be the absolute lowest rung of the ladder now, despite many of them having been in the force for years and generally knowing the area better than any of the British new recruits. “I’ll see what I can do,” he says, setting off with determination for the castle.

He runs into Moran first, who, when told of the predicament, laughs and says affably, “We’re doing bugger all at the moment, they’re yours to take.”

John raises an eyebrow. “And it’s your call to make,” he says, pointedly, and Moran laughs again — booming, vibrant — and sets off for the guard station at the tower, John following.

He filches a key from one of the desk drawers, giving a pointed look to the guard on duty, who looks down at his paperwork with haste, and tosses it to John. “Have at it,” he says, with that big grin again, and John just laughs. 

The Crossleys and staff cars are kept behind the old keep in a locked-down yard, presumably to avoid joyrides or — more insidiously, and more likely — sabotage. John unlocks it and starts up the nearest vehicle, waiting for the engine to warm to a growl, and manoeuvres it out carefully. He hadn’t ever driven before the war, except the plough or the cart, but had been given the quickest of lessons during a battle when one of the ammunition supply drivers was killed. He likes being behind the wheel, having some sense of control over the journey — especially now, when at any point a road might be interrupted by an explosion or ambush.

Driving the Crossley back down the street to the barracks, John finds the whole company outside, arrayed around their disabled vehicle. O’Toole is half-visible under the bonnet, leaning into the engine, and it’s not clear what purpose the rest of the company serves other than commenting unhelpfully on the vehicle’s state and O’Toole’s abilities. 

“Come along,” John calls over the noise of the engine; Blake and O’Leary look moderately disappointed to see that they’ll be out on patrol anyway, but Hughes swings up into the back with gusto, slapping the side. As the others load in — excepting O’Toole, who will stay behind to keep at the engine — Sergeant Danielson steps up to John’s side.

“You didn’t steal this, did you?”

“Uh, no sir.” Danielson raises an eyebrow. “Colonel Moran, sir — he lent it to us.”

“Oh, God.” He sighs, scrubbing at his forehead. “In debt to the Toughs, I don’t — just return it in good condition, for God’s sake,” he says, nearly pleadingly, and John nods grimly.

“I’ll do my best, sir,” he says, wondering if he’s just condemned himself. 

They trundle off down the road. It’s overcast, slightly, but that’s better than rain soaking them to the bone or sun beating through their heavy wools, so they stay in high spirits. John glances back, by instinct, to make sure they’re all alert; other than Hughes, many of them are still a little green or, like MacKenzie and O’Mahoney, long-time Peelers more used to general, unarmed policing and reluctant to use their new, unfamiliar weapons. In an eight-person company one weak link is enough to damn them all.

It’s because he’s looking back that he nearly doesn’t see the trip wire. When he looks forward again, he glimpses just the faintest glimmer of light off the wire strung across the road and brakes, hard, throwing the men in the back against each other in startled surprise. The Crossley’s momentum, however, is not easy to stall, and it keeps moving right into the wire — John watches it, as though time has slowed to a honey-trickle — and the wire tightens, pulls, but — as the vehicle finally shudders to a stop — doesn’t snap.

He takes a shaking breath and calls back to the men, who are cursing him, and his mother, and his bloody inability to drive, silencing them with a sharp-barked command. He daren’t let his foot off the brake. In the seat next to him, Finnegan’s eyes are wide — fearful — and John wants simultaneously to slap him and comfort him. 

“Finnegan, I need you to get out of the vehicle.”

“Sir?” 

John is not actually his superior, but he doesn’t correct him, just directs, gently, “Step out, very carefully, and see what the wire is attached to. Don’t touch it, and keep your pistol ready.” Finnegan swallows, but draws his pistol out and steps down the side, landing on the ground with a thump. Cocking the gun, he walks with careful steps parallel to the stretched-tight wire, which leads to the edge of the road and just into the clump of scraggly trees along the side. John’s eyes are sharp on the treeline — they’re not so dense that they could hide a full Flying Column, but a man or two would have enough cover. He gestures to Hughes to watch the ridge on the other side, and Hughes nods and settles his Lee-Enfield against the crook of his shoulder. 

The grass rustles around Finnegan’s legs. All around them, the road is silent, eerie, but for the shuffle of the men and the hum of the motor. Finnegan ducks down, out of sight for a moment, then comes back up and walks, more quickly now, back to the vehicle. 

“It’s a grenade,” he says as he climbs back in. John exhales. 

“Nothing else?” Finnegan shakes his head.

“Okay then,” John says, and calls back to the men, “Hold on!” Jamming his foot down, he shifts the Crossley into reverse and slams them backwards, reversing away from tripwire as fast as the vehicle will take them. Ten yards down, he slows to a stop, and they all wait, breathless, for a long moment. Nothing happens.

John jumps down from the Crossley, waving Finnegan to follow.

“Sir?” Finnegan says again, and John bites down his grin.

“You’ve steady hands,” he says, which is true. He’s seen Finnegan sit quiet with a thread and needle, patching his uniform, or cleaning his gun, the metal gleaming and precise. At the edge of the road, there is, indeed, a grenade lashed to a stake, its pin tied to the tripwire. “Hold the pin,” John says, cutting the tripwire as Finnegan does so. They remove the grenade, easily, and John gathers up the detritus of the tripwire to bring back to the barracks.

Loading back in, they’re on their way again when the vehicle bumps over — through? — something in the road and a sickening pop and crack rents the air. “Shit,” John says, which is no doubt echoed by the other men, and climbs out again. Hughes directs the men to cover all angles, for this spot in the road is particularly disadvantageous, with its tree cover on one side and its steep heavy ridge on the other. 

They’d gone through a pothole, is all, but the angle appears to have wrenched the wheel askew and the axle leans, precipitously, at a sickening angle. Finnegan stands next to him; John cracks and rolls his jaw and hopes for a spare tyre in the rear. There isn’t one.

“Well,” John says. 

Finnegan nods. “I think we’re fucked,” he says, with more certainty than he shows about — anything, really. “Sir.”

++

They end up sending O’Leary back to town — griping until he’s out of sight, mind — and after a long, tense wait, Sergeant Danielson shows up, seated tensely next to Moran in a staff car, O’Leary cramped into the back. Moran’s moustache twitches, amused, but Danielson’s lips are set, grimly, as he steps out and comes up to inspect the damage.

“Watson,” he says, and John nods, feeling weight settle in his gut.

“Sir,” he starts. “A pothole, sir.” It’s possible he’s being over-deferential, and Danielson raises an eyebrow. John resists the urge to duck his chin.

“I think I said return it in good condition. I did say that, didn’t I?” He pitches his voice low so Moran won’t hear, but over his shoulder John can just make out the amused quirk of Moran’s moustache. 

“Sir,” John acknowledges. 

From behind them, Finnegan pipes up, voice determined. “Watson did save us from being blown up!”

Danielson’s eyebrows raise, tandem surprise, and John has to bite back his smile. God bless Finnegan. “There was a tripwire, sir, across the road. Attached to a grenade. We managed to disassemble the trap. Finnegan has the grenade.”

“Right. Well. In the scheme of things —” He trails off. “Finnegan, best let me take that.” Finnegan’s face falls, just a bit, but he hands the grenade to the Sergeant, who tucks it onto his bandoleer. “Get this fixed,” he says, gesturing to the tyre. “We’re sitting ducks if we stay here much longer.”

“Sir,” John nods sharply, and looks behind Danielson to find Moran, who still has a steady, amused smile. “No spare tyre?” he says in an undertone as he steps up.

“Grievous oversight, I assure you,” Moran says, and John shakes his head and goes round the back of the staff car. They’ve tossed a tyre and some tools into the back seat, onto an old tarpaulin, and John hauls them out, Moran watching. 

_Don’t go scrambling to help,_ John thinks, lugging the tyre over to the Crossley. It doesn’t take long to fix, thank god, and soon enough they’re on their way again, Danielson still grim-faced next to Moran, who drives madly fast, kicking dust up behind them until the car is obscured, and the Crossley moving out to complete their patrol.

The rest is uneventful — long and circuitous, true, avoiding a few known and one or two new hazards. Finnegan takes copious notes on each barricade or downed tree, down to the depth of the ditches dug across the road. John thinks, wonderingly, of introducing him to Sherlock, who would, no doubt, have him for an errand boy in a quick second. Wide-eyed and green he may be, but he’s eager to please and willing, and Sherlock’s impatience could sometimes use someone so meticulous. On the next case, Finnegan at his hip, Sherlock could have full case notes to, oh perhaps to write up for the future, and — John’s thoughts, meandering, turn to picturing Sherlock, wild-haired and dramatic, with the prim and delicate Finnegan, and — god, a deep, green envy suddenly hits him deep in his gut, and, startled, he shakes his head, concentrating once more on the road ahead.

Finnegan glances over, but John cannot look at him. Is that what Sherlock needs — what he might want? Not John, challenging and, and damaged, but someone young and eager and pliable. He has no idea; and even less an idea what has made him latch onto John. Proximity, most likely. It can’t be that John is more interesting — he’s met half-a-dozen different officers who did more in the war, who have fuller and richer lives than him. Cyril Bayley, even — he was the youngest RAF pilot ever before he got injured. He’s more of Sherlock’s milieu, too. Or George Nathan, who seemed interested to know Sherlock.

Resolving himself to think of anything but Sherlock, John peers at the road before them. He can see, in the distance, another barricade — a pile of downed trees — and feels his heart pick up, ready for what may come.

++

The men disembark from the Crossley still in good spirits and ready for a drink to cap the day. It’s difficult work, clearing barricades, but it’s much easier done without bullets flying, and the roads had been entirely clear of rebel activity barring the single grenade. John returns the Crossley to the Castle, locking it in and tossing the key back to the cadet on duty, a grim-faced Lieutenant he hasn’t met before, and heads back down to the barracks to clean up before the pub. 

His plans are changed, however, when he finds a note pinned to the front of the barracks door, his name underlined twice. 

“A sweetheart already?” Hughes teases as John steps inside. 

“Fuck off,” John says, good natured, and opens the envelope. The handwriting — is it familiar, already, or is that John grasping for assurance? — is slapdash and bold, and declares Sherlock utterly bored and in need of assistance. His earlier misgivings seem to dissipate, replaced by warmth that suffuses his chest. 

“’Fraid I have an engagement tonight,” he says to Hughes, who rolls his eyes and throws his worn, sweaty, balled-up sock at him. John mock-gags and throws it back.

“She’d better be pretty,” he says, and John smiles, hoping to be enigmatic. He scrubs at his hands and the back of his neck, still feeling the sweat from the patrol, and decides instead to strip off his jacket, changing his shirt first. He buttons back up, feeling fresher, and slicks his hair to the side; over his shoulder in the mirror he can see Hughes and his amused smile, and he raises one eyebrow.

“You mind?”

“Oh, no, not at all. I hope you have a grand time with your lady.” It’s meant in jest, but John grits his teeth. He’ll need to be more careful, if — he’ll need to mind himself, so — they’ll get the wrong impression, when — if — they find out it’s Sherlock he’s off to see, Sherlock he spends his half-days with. 

For the moment, though, he gives Hughes a rakish grin and fixes his bandoleer over his jacket, buckled tight and polished. Hughes huffs, amused, and John cocks his head as he brushes past him, clamouring down the stairs. 

The boys have only headed up the street — Hughes, despite his mock-despair over John’s abandonment, will join them shortly, he has no doubt — so a pile of bicycles remains in the back garden, free for use. John chooses his favourite — the seat’s just right and the chain doesn’t stick like many of the others — and sets off.

The night air is cool against his still-damp skin, ruffling his hair. He doesn’t use pomade, not usually, and Sherlock would notice immediately if he did; the thought is chilling, somehow, too blatant and laid-bare, and he’s not certain what that means, that he can’t — won’t — let Sherlock know that he thought of it, that Hughes teased him and he took it, that he cleaned himself up and bemoaned his evening whiskers and combed his hair, to the side, sharp-parted and darkened with sweat and water at the base of his neck, at his temples. Instead, he lets the night breeze ruffle his hair, dry it, salty-stiff and disarrayed, so he’ll arrive looking like he’s worked the day, not spent it distracted over what, exactly, Sherlock might want.

It was John, after all, that he summoned.

++

Norbury is still bright, Lady Holmes no doubt awake yet, but John knows, somehow, to go around to the back, where the barn blazes equally. When John pokes his head through the trapdoor, Sherlock is stretched out on a battered settee, which hadn’t been there before; John cocks his head, confused, before pulling himself up. 

Sherlock doesn’t stir at his presence, not until John says, “You’re redecorating,” at which he hums, waving one hand languidly, eyes still shut. John looks around: beyond the trapdoor and the plate-glass windows, there’s no other entrance to the loft, and yet, Sherlock’s outfitted it like a bloody parlour. “How did you even —”

Sherlock cracks one lid open; his eye flicks quickly over John’s form, and John feels read — perused, scrutinised — and he licks his lips, and Sherlock’s eye flutters closed. “Lifted the floorboards,” he says, as though it were obvious. John looks down at his feet. The floor seems stable, but — “I nailed them back down, don’t be absurd.” John laughs, and finally — finally — Sherlock opens both eyes.

“It’s been the most intolerable day,” he says, and John quips, “So you needed a settee to relieve your stress?” Sherlock glares, in a way that says he’s not amused, and John grins. He comes over to the settee and sits, lifting Sherlock’s feet first then settling them again across his thighs. They’re warm to the touch, despite being bare and rather dirty, and his ankles are bony, protruding from the cuffs of his trousers. John’s not sure where to place his hands, so he settles one on the arm of the sofa and the other stretched across the back, which keeps them — there — away from Sherlock’s feet, his long toes and his thin ankles and the dark hair scattered across his pale skin.

“I _was_ hoping,” Sherlock says peevishly, “that you would have encountered something interesting. But you’ve only been on patrol. Not even shot at.” He manages to sound put-out at not just the world, but John himself, for not engineering an ambush.

“Ta very much,” John says cheerfully, and thinks about tickling the dirty, bare soles of Sherlock’s feet. “We did almost get blown up,” he adds, casually, and Sherlock’s eyes open.

“Go on,” he says, peering at John, as though he’ll be able to read the circumstances in John’s uniform. Then again, he might.

“A tripwire,” John says. “I nearly set it off, too, worrying about the men like a fool.” He has to pause there, for that’s true, isn’t it, that had he looked back a second later, he would have driven right through the wire. 

“You should worry about them,” Sherlock says. “Half hardly know which end of a gun to hold.”

John laughs, but the sound is wry, flat. “It’s not quite so bad, but —” He sighs. “Yes, well. I was worried about them not paying attention, and I nearly killed us all.”

“But you didn’t.”

“No. No, I saw the wire and I stopped — just barely — in time. It was a grenade.”

Sherlock’s eyes, intent, narrow. “But there was no ambush.” It’s a statement; John nods, unnecessary confirmation.

“It was set across the road, and simply left.”

“But why —” Pressing his fingertips together, Sherlock swings his feet off John and stands; John misses their warmth almost instantly, so stands, too, to move the thought away. “That doesn’t make any sense, why would they just leave it? When they could wait for a full ambush?”

“We were late today — our Crossley’s engine. Maybe they tired of waiting?”

Sherlock hums, to show he’s heard John, but frowns. “Do you have the grenade?” he asks, suddenly animated.

“No — it’s at the barracks,” John says, cautiously. “I don’t carry bloody grenades around with me,” he adds, quite reasonably.

“I’ll need to see it,” Sherlock says, and he’s lifting his greatcoat from where it’s spread over a stack of crates and swinging it on before John can protest.

“Sherlock, you can’t — this is different than O’Connor, it’s not —” He touches Sherlock’s elbow; Sherlock turns, quickly enough that his coat brushes John’s shins, and oh — oh! — how John wants to say, yes, let’s go, let’s play with a grenade and not worry about blowing our heads off because Sherlock’s face is just — he’s lit up, he’s _alive,_ and just the look of him sends an answering thrill through John’s veins.

“Fine,” John says, “fine,” and Sherlock grins, “but tomorrow.” Sherlock’s eyes narrow. “It’s late, Sherlock, and it’s dark out, and I’ll still have to convince Danielson it’s even a good idea.”

“Danielson,” Sherlock scoffs. “He’ll let me if I tell him it’s necessary.”

John bites his tongue, not saying how very much he’d enjoy watching that exchange, and says instead, “Be that as it may, it’s still too late. Come by in the morning, we’ll sort it.”

“Fine,” Sherlock says, as though he’s entirely put out, as though John’s not just promised something he clearly wants. 

“Now, do you want to tell me what was so trying about today?” John asks, and gestures Sherlock back to the settee, and with an enormous, all-suffering sigh, Sherlock settles back and does so, a long string of irritations that John coaxes out of him, until he’s left relaxed and spread across the settee, and John, and the evening passes quite nicely.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[Armoured Cars Replace Mounted Police During Military Raids](http://youtu.be/SMFk9J3BlNM)**
> 
> **1\. “They’re not the easiest buggers to work with,” he says, finally, which is still more diplomatic than many of the RIC would be.** There was a fair amount of resentment between the (Irish) RIC, the English Black  & Tans, and the English ADRIC, given that the English often saw only the lack of training and relative provincialism of the Irish. The Irish RIC had been under Sinn Fein boycotts for years at this point, social strategies and intimidation techniques designed to make the lives of any Irishman working for the Crown hell. Often, Irish RIC served in counties other than their home counties, in order to minimise retaliation against their families by local IRA, and the required closeness between the RIC and the British recruits often made such positions even more untenable and difficult.
> 
> **2\. when at any point a road might be interrupted by an explosion or ambush.** Patrols were one of the main duties of the B &Ts, done on foot, bicycle, or in trucks, and given that the roads were very often dug up, blown up, barricaded, or ambushed, the patrols often took unexpected detours in efforts to keep up intelligence on passable routes and IRA activity. The vehicle in the chapter photo, an armoured truck, would have been used largely in Cork and Dublin, while Crossley Tenders were more frequently used throughout the countryside. The tenders came equipped with a metal frame and canvas cover but, in Ireland, were more often driven open-backed as, due to the visual obstructions caused by trees, hills, and irregular roads as well as the nature of guerrilla warfare, visibility from all angles was required. The RIC thus patrolled in rain or shine with no cover, as is mentioned (with some annoyance) in accounts of the time.
> 
> **3\. Cyril Bayley, even — he was the youngest RAF pilot ever before he got injured.** Another historical person, who served in C Company of ADRIC.


	9. (Controlled) Explosions

Sherlock fits rubberised safety goggles over his eyes. In his palm, the grenade is heavy, solid; the metal has warmed to his hands and feels strangely — unsettlingly — vibrant, alive. He glances over his shoulder to John, who nods, his own goggles and Sherlock’s heavy beekeeping gloves in place. Thumbing the trigger mechanism down, Sherlock pulls the pin and arches his arm — up, up — and throws, sending the grenade sailing over the garden wall into the unkempt grass of the edge of the demesne. He watches its progress, as much as he can, until it disappears behind the wall and John tugs him down, pulling at his sleeve and saying — “For god’s sake, Sherlock, get down.”

John’s insistence pulls him to his knees, and he falls, heavily, against him, John’s shoulder bolstering him up, and grins. John’s eyes are wide, bulbous, through the goggles, the creases at the corners magnified and wavering under the thick, clear rubber, and his face is close. He’s shaking his head, and saying something, but it’s interrupted by the rumble-bang of the grenade, which sends a cloud of dust up and knocks free a tumble of bricks from the top of the garden wall.

Standing, Sherlock brushes off the front of his trousers before reaching a hand to John, who takes it to pull himself to standing, coughing at the dust. “The wall —” John says, unnecessarily, and Sherlock waves him off.

“It was crumbling already,” he says, fitting the toe of his boot into one of the myriad gaps and pushing himself over the top. John follows; Sherlock has to bite away his grin at John’s muffled exhale upon landing, glad of facing away, and strides through the tall, waving grass. It reaches just to the tips of his fingers, and he lets them trail along, enjoying the feather-soft skimming of each blade against his skin.

The grenade has left a patch of ground blown down to the dirt, stones kicked up and grass flattened and scorched; the area is approximately six feet in diameter, though the debris has clearly flown far. For a moment Sherlock curses himself for not having chosen a clearer area than the untended field, but John had insisted upon the protection of the wall. 

Sherlock drops to a knee, bending to look at a piece of debris. A piece of metal, roughly square, less than an inch on either side. He prods at it: still hot. Working his shirt cuff down over his hand to protect his fingers, he lifts it up, inspects it more closely. He turns to call for John, but John is already there, leaning to kneel beside him, and the sudden immediacy of his presence sends a strange pulse trilling down his spine. 

“Wouldn’t you say,” Sherlock says, voice gratifyingly steady, “that this is different?”

John peers at the fragment and says, succinctly, “Huh.” 

Sherlock lifts the piece up, letting the light glint off the edges, revealing — there — unmistakable grooves. 

“But grenades don’t —” John says, and Sherlock nods, exhales. 

“Precisely.” He stands and strides back and over the wall, to where they’ve assembled the detritus from the last two grenade throws. He’d suspected, right when he held the new device in his hand, but to see his suspicions realised — well. He lifts the remains of their first attempt, holding it out to John. “You’ve seen these before, yes?”

“Sure,” John says. He picks up the shell of the grenade, cloven in half along a jagged line. “Common Mills bomb — saw enough of ‘em on the front; threw enough of them.”

“And they always break apart like this?”

“Sometimes, yeah. More often they shatter, like the second.” They’d found pieces of the second scattered far and wide; each irregular, rough, with sharp points and jagged edges.

“So what happened here,” Sherlock says, lifting the last enigmatic fragment. He fits it against the shell of the first grenade; as he’d thought, the piece’s edges are delineated by the grooves in the casing. 

“It shattered,” John says, peering at the fragments.

“Not just that, John. It was designed to break apart precisely. Shrapnel, but in a measurable amount. Most grenades shatter into irregular pieces or split down their seam. Their range and efficacy is unpredictable as a result. This is something new.” He fingers the small, precise piece of iron, admiring the raw, basic geometry of it: one of many, predictable, measurable. The implications filter through his mind quickly: more precise effects, more accuracy in hitting targets, a more predictable affected area. 

“Jesus. I — oh, god.” Startled, Sherlock glances up at John; John’s shoved the goggles up his forehead, leaving his hair to stick out in all directions, and rubs his hand over his mouth. His cheeks are pale.

Sherlock blinks. “What?” 

“They’re not using Mills bombs, Sherlock.” Sherlock frowns; they’d just established that. “They’re making their own — they’re — if they can make their own explosives, they’re not reliant on what they can filch from us. They can — oh, god, the ambush. It wasn’t a trap, not really — they were testing.”

Sherlock blinks and realises too late that his mouth is parted, open, wet; he closes it hastily with a damp swallow and looks away from John. Away from John’s rapid mouth working and his quick realisations; his conclusions coming quicker than Sherlock’s own, finding the crux — the part that matters to John, at least — faster than Sherlock himself had arrived.

He doesn’t speak for a long moment, his thoughts — scientific advancement, mathematical precision — an insurmountable distance from John’s practicality, from his soldier’s mind working out strategy. In a startling, sudden movement, John spins away, slamming his hand against the brick, and swears. “Fuck. Fuck, Sherlock, this is — this is bad, right. You know that?” He continues without Sherlock’s assent. “Gun running we can — well, we don’t catch it all, but we’ve a better chance if they’re bringing it from the continent, if it has to come through a port somewhere, but this — on the ground, here — we haven’t a chance. Not a chance.” He slaps the wall again, seemingly heedless of the pain in his crimsoned palm. 

“Oh,” Sherlock says; it comes out more breathless than intended, concerned, as though his throat had sensed the way his hand clenched at his side against the blood-deep desire to grasp at John’s hand, his elbow, his shoulder, his chest, and to — to reassure, he realises, startlingly. He forces his voice calm. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that.”

“No? You know that a huge part of our strategy has been monitoring and disabling their supply routes, yeah? I don’t know how we’re supposed to —”

“If they’re manufacturing their own grenades,” Sherlock interrupts, clawingly desperate to stop the sharp, angry glint of John’s voice, “then they’re either smuggling or stealing the explosive material, or creating their own. Either way, it can be tracked.”

John breathes out; air whistles through his teeth. “How do you mean?”

“Simple. A few experiments on various chemical compounds should allow me to identify the class of explosive used. Given samples of possible sources — it’s simple enough to match.” His surety doesn’t quite meet the bravado in his voice; he’s not worked on commercial explosives before, and the lab at Norbury is still rudimentary. But John’s hands begin to unclench, his breathing slows; Sherlock feels a sudden, impossible, impulse to tell him he’ll have the culprit making the bombs in custody within a week. That might be promising a bit much, though. 

“So,” John says finally, grinning a bright smile up at Sherlock. It doesn’t quite reach his still-worried eyes, but it’s a start. “How do we start?”

++

The third attempt, the new grenade, had been preceded by two earlier devices confiscated in raids and captures. As John had said, those two were common enough Mills bombs, the self-same used by the RIC, which meant plenty available for Sherlock to have a couple of spares for the sake of experimentation. The new device, though: it was the first they’d seen of its kind, differentiated only by a slightly more oblong shape to the cast-iron hull and a nearly imperceptible difference in heft. 

Sherlock sorts through every other device that John’s company has captured — not many, decrepit rifles and well-worn handguns being much more common loot — but finds no more matching the description.

He curses his own propensity toward explosives, wishing he’d disassembled the device first. As it was, he has a few shattered pieces — each as neatly geometric as the last — which, when puzzled together, assemble approximately two-thirds of a full shell. Scraping each for any remaining explosive material, he places the haphazard pile on the corner of his desk, where it looms at him. 

The Mills grenades he disassembles carefully, under John’s guiding eye. John drags up a chair to sit behind him, knees spread to tuck close — one touches Sherlock’s thigh, warm through two layers of clothing, and the other must press against the wooden back of Sherlock’s chair, though he doesn’t know for certain — and watches, speaking low and soft. Each word rustles against Sherlock’s hair, brushing the skin of his ear, and for one long moment his hands fall still, distracted away from the task, until John cups his fingers around Sherlock’s slack hand calmly — immensely, extraordinarily steady — and he says, “hold on, right here, tight,” hot breath across Sherlock’s cheek.

Inhaling, Sherlock nods and moves his hand as directed. John’s are smaller than his, though wide, and scarred across the broad backs of his palms. Fingertips rough, pressed against Sherlock’s knuckles, holding him in place; the lever under his fingers snugs against the body of the grenade. He’s not afraid of it going off, not really, but John’s hand around his — warm, dry, steady — reassures. John unscrews the filling cap and releases his hand, reaching for the glass cylinder Sherlock had set aside earlier. 

The grenade is heavy in his hand, solid; he tips it gently, tapping the explosive powder out in the glass. Once it’s empty, he eases the base plug open and, taking a deep breath, gently eases the fuse out, releasing the detonator and percussion cap. The detonator drops into his hand, and nearly slides through; he can feel John’s hand grip, suddenly, on his knee. 

“I have it,” Sherlock says, voice hoarse, and tilts his hand to show John: the detonator tube, resting across his palm, fuse caught between his fingers. 

“Jesus,” John says, a sharp exhale in Sherlock’s ear, and Sherlock’s other hand tightens on the grenade casing. He lets his eyes fall closed, just for a moment — not so long that John will notice, but enough that he can ease the shocking thrum of his blood, which thunders through his temples, his hands, to his knee where John’s hand still grips, to his cock, heavy and — and swollen. He shifts; John lifts his hand away. Sherlock inhales through his nose and jerks his eyes open. 

He sets the detonator to one side. Once he’s finished with the body, he’ll unscrew the detonator cap to extract the igniter within, for testing as well. Yesterday, he had gone down to Cork, to the University, and scoured the library for any books that might be of use. He puts his mind, very firmly, onto what he’d read about the various incendiary and explosive compounds used in grenades, and their qualities: dynamite, blastin gelatine, gelignite, ballistite, cheddite, cordite. Consistencies, colours. Blast patterns, scorch marks. John shifts and his leg presses against Sherlock’s. 

“Nearly there,” he says, as though Sherlock has stalled with fear.

“Yes,” Sherlock says, sharply; John huffs. With the detonator safely out, Sherlock can pull out the pin and release the lever, dropping the striker through the cavity to fall, with a heavy thunk, onto the table. The rest of the grenade body comes apart easier, until it’s strewn in pieces across the surface of the table, the shell rocking with residual movement, empty. John picks it up, peers inside. He reaches for a paintbrush stuck in the jumble of pencils and tools in a crowded tin can at the corner of the table and brushes the inner surface, tilting it over the glass cylinder to catch the last flakes that drop out. 

“Just to be safe,” he says, and Sherlock hums. “That was good,” John adds. Sherlock glances at him, puzzled. John jerks his head toward the disassembled device. “Your, um — your hands. Steady.” Sherlock looks down at his hands; John coughs. “Just — some people would be nervous, is all, first time, um —”

“Yes,” Sherlock says, drawing out the word unsteadily. “I suppose.”

“Explosives, Sherlock?” 

Sherlock shrugs, affecting an air of nonchalance. John snorts and knocks their shoulders together. “Yes, yes, don’t be a git.” He leans back; rolls his shoulders. “So now we wait? For another device to show?”

“Precisely. It won’t be long.” John doesn’t ask, just lifts one eyebrow. “They’re testing,” Sherlock says, simply. “This one didn’t blow; there will be more.”

“Ah. So you’re saying I should keep a wary eye.” He stands, dropping his hand to the back of Sherlock’s chair, where, if Sherlock just leant back — just enough — John’s thumb would brush against his hair, the nape of his neck. Sherlock drops his head back, and looks up at John.

John shifts his hand. His thumb scrapes across the skin just below Sherlock’s hair, over the jut of his vertebra; Sherlock bites on the edge of his tongue, wills his mouth to stay closed. “Isn’t that your job, Constable?” he says, dragging John’s title out in a drawl and flicking his eyelids lazily. 

With a snorting laugh, John presses the ball of his thumb just a little harder to Sherlock’s spine, prodding. Sherlock only just swallows his gasp; even stifled, it sounds heavy, loud, a hiccoughing gulp echoing off the rafters. John raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t pull his hand away for one abounding moment, rubbing his thumb up the fine hairs at Sherlock’s nape. 

Embarrassed realisation blooms over John’s face in a quick, rolling, moment; terrible, to see how he jerks his hand away and averts his eyes, guiltily; and wonderful, all that expression, naked, in the flush of his cheeks and the worried swipe of his tongue over his bottom lip, and the pull of his shoulders back, to attention. Wonderful, were it not for the swooping glut of — shame, and surprise at it — that jerks Sherlock’s desire down, burrowing it somewhere in his gut. He grips the edge of the table; stands. His chair rocks precipitously, and he grabs at it, fumbles, manages only just to keep it from falling. John looks at the chair, not at him. 

“I’ll just —” John starts, gesturing toward the trapdoor. “And you’ll tell me when —”

“Yes, yes,” Sherlock says, suddenly sharply impatient for John, with his averted gaze, to go — to leave — to let Sherlock alone with the faint memory of John’s thumb, pressed between the notches of his spine, and the sickly coil of want buried in his gut.

John blinks, and looks at him — finally — then away, and nods sharply. “Fine then,” he says, unnecessarily. The beat of his hobnailed boots echos as he strides across the loft, and his steps on the ladder are careful, ever so, and neat: contained, precise. Once he disappears from view, Sherlock pounds his hand onto the tabletop, making the grenade fragments jump, and drops heavily back into the chair. 

Pressing the balls of his hands against his thighs, Sherlock lets his head drop back; John’s thumb ghosts on his skin. His stumbling voice; his gaze on Sherlock’s hands; his breath damp over Sherlock’s skin. With a swallowed, frustrated groan, Sherlock wrenches open the buttons of his flies and shoves his hand inside. His cock is full, swelling against the curl of his fingers; hot, damp with sweat. 

Fingers curl and grasp — John’s hand on his knee, gripping — thumb rolling over the head, working down his foreskin — John’s snorting laugh; his wide-mouthed grin — hips tipping up, his hand slick and hot — John’s lips, by his ear, and his breathless words — 

Sherlock groans when he comes, stifling it against his teeth; it leaves his hand sticky and wet, his mouth sour. His other hand is still fisted against his thigh, fabric of his trousers gripped and creased. He releases it, slowly, stretching his fingers, and wipes his other hand clean, buttoning his trousers. Gripping the edge of the table, he stares down at the fragments. He clears his throat, sits up, and lifts the grenade shell. Onward. 

++

Sherlock stifles a yawn; a bee hovers next to his ear, buzzing gently, and he has resolutely ignored an itch behind his knee for the past half hour. A branch bobs in the wind, partially obscuring his view below, but he doesn’t bother to crane his neck to see. Another quarter hour, at least, before the sentry completes his round and trades with the next lookout. Leaning back against the tree trunk, Sherlock shifts on his branch; it’s not as broad as would be preferred for his current espionage mission, but it provides the best visibility for him while still granting a verdant canopy of leaves which mostly shield him from view. 

He flips the pages of his book idly; the sound of the paper rustling blends with the breeze skipping and whispering through the woods. Sunlight dapples the forest floor, lending the air a hazy, underwater greenness. The idyllic arboreal summer day would make for quite a satisfactory outing — a picnic, perhaps, or an _en plein air_ sketching expedition; for someone else, that is — were it not for his current object: the thirty-man IRA Flying Column currently camping out just over the peak.

With no way of knowing if his intended contact will be on sentry duty soon, Sherlock has had little option beyond a long and patient wait. The sentries work in shifts of two hours, making wide, overlapping circuits around the camp; Sherlock has been through three changings of the guard. They are handled with perhaps slightly less circumstance than those of the good king: the most recent man had arrived, spat on the ground, elbowed the man he was to relieve, and told him to piss off with a jovial and expressive comment as to the circumstances of his birth. 

He’d go straight into camp, but — well. There’s more than one missing body buried somewhere in these woods, or in the boglands beyond; mouldering into the land or drying, curled tight and fearful like their ancient cousins waiting centuries in the peat. His title does nothing to protect him — to some, it may condemn him — and most of those he’s known from childhood who now drill under the sun and the rain with the Flying Column have little enough sympathy for him. There’s one that may, though; or enough to speak with him, at least.

A rustle. The snap of a twig; footsteps. Sherlock stills, makes his breath very even, and peers down as best he can through the leafy arbour. The round curve of a tweed cap, a rifle slung across canvas-clad shoulders and a pistol strapped to one hip. The man’s jacket is dark, and when he bows his head Sherlock can just see a narrow strip of white from his undone collar. Sherlock can’t see his face, but the narrowness of the man’s shoulders could be right.

He’s not seen Padraig since before he left for Oxford, but the way the man below him shifts, one foot to the other, is familiar. Sherlock remembered when Padraig had gotten the wound that caused the minute hitch of his hip, had helped Molly pull the nail out and held Padraig down while she pieced him together with uncertain, amateur stitches. 

Another man arrives; the sentry, finishing his rounds. They speak, the wind throwing snatches of their voices up to Sherlock. Irish, but he’d taught himself when Padraig and Seamus wouldn’t, to better know what they and those about town were saying. Political malarkey, most of it, but snatches of gossip or truth caught when those you’re interviewing don’t know you understand are ever useful. 

Nothing of consequence, now, just assurances as to the quiet state of affairs in the forest. The first sentry departs; Sherlock waits, watches the new guard walk a few steps, until — yes, he’s certain, or nearly — and with a neat, rolling motion, he swings from the branch and drops neatly to the forest floor.

The man twists to him immediately, gun drawn and aimed in a fluid motion. Sherlock holds his hands up, chin high so the dappled light hits his cheeks, shows his face. “Nice to see you, too, Padraig.” He has a fresh scar across his cheek, and his nose has been broken since they last saw each other. Sherlock draws his shoulders back; Padraig is his height, taller, and not the gangly, angular boy he remembers.

Padraig starts, but doesn’t lower his gun. “Holmes? What the —” He takes two rushing steps and shoves his free arm against Sherlock’s collarbone, pushing him up against the tree trunk. Sherlock lets his body relax, slow, deliberate, and keeps his eyes on Padraig’s. “How the fuck did you find us?”

Sherlock scoffs. “I know these woods as well as you; don’t you remember.” Padraig’s eyes narrow, but his arm loosens slightly. Sherlock waits: this is how it always worked with Padraig — he fell in as soon as Sherlock reminded him who was the more clever. That summer, with the nail and Molly’s needle piercing through Padraig’s pale skin, Sherlock had been fourteen, Molly twelve perhaps, and Padraig and Seamus sixteen both and newly dismissive of Sherlock, with his Big House clothes and his angry wit and his too-sharp tongue. It’d still work, though, if pressed right. “I could give you away if I wished; but that’s not what I’m here for. I just want to talk.” Taking a deep breath — his chest rises, pressing against Sherlock’s, then falls away again — Padraig nods once, sharply, and steps back.

“So talk,” he says, roughly, and digs a cigarette from his pocket, tucking his pistol under one arm to strike the match. The cigarette takes a long moment to light, drooping from his lip, testament to the damp of their training camp. The Column usually bunks in a rota of barns and outbuildings — Republican farms in Bandon or Doneraile or Ballingeary — but they’re training now, sleeping rough and drilling at all hours. 

Sherlock flicks his eyes up; he can just see Padraig’s eyes under the brim of his cap, pulled low. Like many of his fellow Republicans, Padraig has a habit for going unnoticed, and even now with a sharper set to his shoulders, a cigarette at his lip, he could have been one of any men in any town in the county. To most, anyway. He’d been more vocal, before, when Seamus was still alive: visible and loud, brash and bold. Sherlock had despised them for it, their fresh fervour for the political meetings that happened in people’s parlours, in pubs; the pamphlets they waved and forced into strangers’ hands, cheap ink staining their fingers; even, strangely, the way they mocked Molly, with words they thought she was too little to know yet, despite her steady hands and calm head. 1914: the Great War young still, but they had waited for their war yet.

“I’ve found something you all left behind,” Sherlock starts, still leant against the tree. Padraig smokes lazily, waits, and Sherlock smirks. He’s learnt some patience in his age, then. “A grenade.”

“It’s a war, Holmes. You’re going to have to be more specific.”

“A new grenade,” Sherlock says; Padraig’s eyes flicker just enough to confirm to Sherlock that he knows about the new explosive, about the tests and their potential power. “Awfully clever design; I’d relish a chance to speak with the designer.”

“Feck off,” Padraig says, with a sharp, harsh laugh. “I should kill you, you know.”

He’s long since lowered his gun, though, leaving it to hang loosely at one side. “You won’t,” Sherlock says, feeling obstinate, and Padraig’s fingers curl around the butt of the pistol. He spits and looks at Sherlock, hard, for a moment. Then with a great sigh, he tucks the pistol back into the holster.

“You’re testing,” Sherlock tosses out, carelessly. He shoves his hands in his pockets, lets his hips cant forward casually. 

“I don’t know what you mean,” Padraig says, rather flatly, and tellingly.

“You can tell your man it worked.” The rapid flick of Padraig’s eyes give him away; he looks askance, gaze fixed to nothing in particular over Sherlock’s shoulder, in a quick moment, but Sherlock saw first the excited little flash. “Clean apart; square fragments. _Very_ clever.” He shoves off the tree for the first time, takes a step forward, waves one hand, giving it just the fluttering edge of excitement. “I’m really quite — it’s very impressive. I couldn’t have designed it.” _Wouldn’t have;_ takes too much patience, that sort of work. The enthusiasm does its job, though, for Padraig looks like he’s just been told Christmas will be happening in July. “I’m ever so curious about the explosives, though — couldn’t quite work it out. I’d love to talk to him. As a scientist, you know.”

Padraig snorts. “As a nosey bugger, you mean. I’m not fecking telling you, so you can piss off. Everyone’s seen you going around with the Tans, you know.”

Sherlock sniffs, as if offended. “I’m a consulting detective,” he says, contriving to look down his nose despite Padraig’s new height advantage.

“You’re a consulting cunt,” he says, with his broad, hoarse laugh. Sherlock had forgotten — or removed — how much he despised Padraig’s laugh. In fact, the man himself has lost any veneer of charm his hazy presence in Sherlock’s memory had retained; Sherlock forces himself not to sigh.

“I’m a consultant,” he says again, more forcefully, “and I know this country as well as any of you.” He lets the words lie between them.

“Like we’re going to stay here, now,” Padraig says with a snort of disbelief, but uncertainty lingers in the way he tightens his shoulders, adjusts his stance. 

“Fine,” Sherlock says, “I could speak to him now; I wouldn’t have to come back, I would be away and you could all disperse at your will. No one need know.”

“Even if he were —” Padraig starts, then shuts his mouth. Sherlock steps in closer, as if sensing Padraig’s uncertainty.

“But if I could just talk to the man, just for a few minutes — or, or see some of the product —” Sherlock leans in urgently, lets his voice drop, a note of desperation peeling at the edges. Padraig’s eyes flicker back and forth across Sherlock’s face.

“Listen,” he says, and Sherlock bites hard at the inside of his cheek to keep from grinning. Just as reminding Padraig who the clever one is pulls in him check, letting him think he’s beaten Sherlock has always been the key to getting him to talk too much. “It’s bigger than the West Cork, right? We put out what we had, and no more’ll come down until we send up a full report.”

_Come down._ Sherlock exhales, through his nose, like he’s disappointed. “Well. Like I said, tell your man in Dublin it worked a trick,” he says, with a shrug of his shoulders, and Padraig nods.

“You’re just alike,” he says finally, with a shrug. He rocks back on his heels, ready to end the conversation and get on with his rounds. “From what I’ve heard. Madmen, if you ask me. You should take care not to blow a hand off and all.”

Sherlock coughs to keep from rolling his eyes, but he holds one hand out. “You’ve been tremendously helpful,” he says, then turns before Padraig has a chance to shake his hand and ambles down the hill. 

“You’re still a cunt, Holmes!” Padraig’s voices carries after him, and Sherlock grins.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[Great Sinn Fein ‘Round Up’ (1919)](http://youtu.be/LLdoi6rZ6yg)**
> 
> **1\. “This is something new.”** While for much of the War, the IRA was largely dependent on what arms they could buy, steal, or smuggle from America, Britain, Germany, and elsewhere, including the Mills bomb commonly used in the Great War, they did also develop their own explosives and grenades. I’m perhaps giving the IRA-developed grenade bomb more credit than it deserves; while one version was, in fact, intended to break into a precise 48 fragments in order to more finely control the shrapnel effect, they didn’t always properly explode.
> 
> **2\. The West Cork.** The active IRA was largely composed of independent flying columns or brigades, highly mobile units made up exclusively of armed volunteers (rather than including administrative or support personnel). Almost continually on the move, the columns relied upon support from local sympathisers for shelter, food, and intelligence. The West Cork Brigade was, at its forming, almost completely untrained and unarmed; by the end of the war it was one of the best-known brigades in the IRA, perhaps largely because of the brigade commander, General Tom Barry, writing and publishing his memoirs of the time. He sums up the brigade position thusly: “Each Brigade stood alone, without hope of outside reinforcements should disaster threaten it. Within the whole National movement the unit made its own war, gloried in its own victories and stood up to its own defeats.”


	10. A Bit of Fun

_July 1920_  
 _Co. Cork_

Hughes slaps John’s shoulder where he’s bent, boot wedged between his knees, polishing the tip vigorously. “Boot up and move out, soldier,” he crows. John flicks his eyes up, languidly; Hughes has wrenched open the artillery store — a cupboard, really, in the entry — and is slinging a full bandoleer over one shoulder. 

“I’m not on patrols until noon,” John says, knowing it will needle Hughes, who pants, nearly, with his eagerness to be asked what is afoot. Predictably, Hughes narrows his eyes and throws his cap at John, who catches it one handed and spins it on the tip of one finger. 

“Oh, stop showing off. C’mon, you’ll want to be in on this.”

“Will I?” John’s set Hughes’ cap down already, knowing he’s moments only from shoving his feet into his boots, tucking his Webley to his hip, and following Hughes on whatever scheme he’s developed.

“Munitions raid,” Hughes says, eyes glinting, and John raises an eyebrow in return. “Farm just west of here. Got the tip not ten minutes ago; something big, from the sounds of it.”

“Really?” John’s been out with Hughes following up his _tips_ more than once; they rarely pan out. Hughes narrows his eyes.

“Don’t be a cock. Mark my words, you’ll want to come along.”

“Explosives?” They’ve not found another of the strange new grenades since the first, and Danielson has barred Sherlock from testing any more of their Mills bombs. John’s fairly certain he’s not learning anything new; the last time he’d been out at Norbury, Sherlock had fashioned homemade firecrackers out of the salvaged explosives and was tossing them into the pond idly. 

“Mayhaps,” Hughes says with an exaggerated shrug. He bounces on the balls of his feet; a child at Christmas.

“Alright then,” John says, putting on his boots with a great show of reluctance that does nothing to convince Hughes.

“That’s what I thought.” Hughes slaps his shoulder, once more, as John stands, and hands over a rifle. John slings it over his shoulder, on Hughes’ heels as they make for the Crossley.

Their company, rounded out by Finnegan, O’Toole, Blake, and O’Leary — the latter two poached from patrol duties — is jovial on the drive. Despite so often leaving them astray and empty-handed, Hughes’ schemes have a way of putting the wind up; the man himself approaches each potential raid with the confident bravado of a well-seasoned actor, ready for the curtain. It helps that he keeps his attentions for the younger constables, who, to a man, tend to regard the Tans with undue deference; Mackenzie and O’Mahony have little time and littler taste for Hughes’s exuberance. 

“Which farm, then?” John says, over the noise of the engine. Hughes glances at him, sly smile incipient.

“The O’Brien’s,” he says, with clear relish, and John laughs, rueful and pleased.

“You devil. How the bloody hell did you manage that?” The O’Brien brothers — there are six of them, all avowed Republicans — have recently gained quite a notorious reputation, and the eldest two, at least, have been implicated in gunrunning schemes before, but there’s never been anything concrete enough to bring them in on. It’s not likely that the boys are all still at home, under mammy’s watchful eye, but to have something that gives them a reason to search, to bring in whoever is there — it’s more than they’ve had before, and Hughes clearly knows it.

“With my god-given charm, Johnny,” Hughes says with a sparkling grin.

“You’re a bastard and a cad.” Hughes shrugs, grin ever wider.

“You’re still here,” he says, “following my lead,” and John laughs and says, “Oh, god help me.”

They pull right up the drive, bold as you please, and jump down from the Crossley, drawing rifles. John stays back, letting Hughes direct his show; Hughes sends Blake and O’Leary round to the barn and O’Toole and Finnegan to the back door, keeping John with him at the front. He gives the others time enough to get into position before beating against the door with a fist.

“RIC,” he calls. “Open the door!” To no one’s surprise, there is no movement from inside. With a nod to John, Hughes braces his shoulder against the door and shoves. The old, brittle wood bends, bends, then gives, splintering round the lock with a great crack, and the two of them push inside, guns aloft, and make a sweep of the rooms.

There’s no one to be found in the front rooms, but John hears a scuffle behind the door as they advance down the back corridor. He nods to Hughes, and as one they shove through, finding two scrambling boys at the ends of the gun barrels.

“Let’s make a guess,” Hughes says. “Ned and Danny, is it?” 

The elder boy — he’s perhaps fourteen, fifteen, and made up of all the angry, awkward angles of that age — sneers and says, “What of it?”

“Ah,” Hughes smiles. Finnegan and O’Toole have joined them from the back door; Finnegan shakes his head to John’s enquiring glance, and Hughes lifts his rifle with more purpose. The younger boy — Danny — shrinks back visibly. “Your brothers about? We’d quite like to have a bit of a chat.”

“Feck if I’ll tell you,” Ned spits, and Hughes gives a great, theatrical sigh. 

“Fine,” Hughes says, with a show of weariness. He steps forward; Ned ducks away from him but Hughes grabs the back of his collar nonetheless, shoving him toward the door. “We’ll take care of this outside.” Hughes grins at John as he passes; John shakes his head and gestures for Danny, who comes more meekly than his brother.

Outside, Hughes gestures them toward the broad wall of the farmhouse, where they stand uneasily, Danny shuffling his boots and Ned gripping his fists tight. 

“Pat them down,” Hughes says, gesturing to Finnegan with the point of his chin. He holds his Lee-Enfield slack, slung over the crook of his elbow, but John can see the way the tip of the barrel tracks the boys’ movements. 

“Against the wall,” Finnegan says, then again, sharper, when Ned, thumbs his chin at him. Finnegan shoves him roughly on the shoulder, and with exaggerated slowness Ned spreads his legs, holds up hands. His younger brother, less cocksure, eyes Hughes’ rifle and does the same. His coat falls open, revealing his worn shirt, no collar or cuffs, and leather braces that hold up trousers clearly passed down from an older — larger — brother. At the open collar of his shirt, his pulse jumps.

Finnegan kicks Ned’s ankles, to spread his legs further, and pats him down, hands skimming inside his jacket, under the cuffs of his trousers. He has a knife in one boot and an ancient Browning revolver snugged at the back of his trousers — “Are you trying to give yourself another arsehole?” John says, because, really, who trains these boys — and a handful of bullets in one pocket. Contraband, certainly, but little out of the ordinary. Off the younger brother, they find a similar knife, but no gun, and just as Finnegan draws it out, the other constables emerge from the barn heaving a dusty crate. 

They drop it to the ground, heavily, and John rubs his forehead. “Explosives,” he says to Hughes, with exasperation; Hughes guffaws and steps over to the crate, bringing one heel down sharply on the locked hasp, which doesn’t bust open but instead breaks off in splinters. He flips the lid open with a toe, revealing, nestled in a bed of straw, two gleaming Lewis machine guns.

“A ha!” Hughes exclaims, leaning to lift one out. He hefts it expertly — artillery, John remembers — and toes at the straw to uncover a box of ammunition. Lee-Enfield slung around his back, he sights down the Lewis; the barrel trains on Danny O’Brien, who flinches away. John hopes they weren’t foolish enough to store them loaded. 

“Do you know, boys,” Hughes says, casually, lowering the gun just enough to be seen over the top, “that it is, in fact, a crime against the realm to hold, harbour, trade, buy, sell, or import weapons within the dominion of Ireland?” He saunters forward, gun still held aloft, and calls over his shoulder, “Did I miss any, Watson?”

John grins; it’s always a show with Hughes. He should have treaded the stage, not these green fields. “Conceal,” John says. “Can’t conceal ‘em, either.” 

Hughes nods, scuffing his heel in the dirt. “Conceal, now. I don’t know that there’s many other words for a pair o’ Lewis guns locked up in a barn.” 

Ned O’Brien sneers; Hughes wilfully ignores him. John returns a bland smile, and Ned narrows his eyes, muttering something under his breath. Hughes turns sharply to him, pulling his revolver in one movement so it, rather than the unarmed Lewis, is trained on Ned. “Something you’d care to contribute, Paddy?”

Ned bucks his chin up and says — something, something in Irish — and spits at the end of it, narrowly missing Hughes’ dusty boots. Whatever his words, they make Finnegan stumble back on his heels before catching himself, taking two long strides, and shoving him against the wall of the barn, forearm to his throat. Finnegan says something in Irish, spitting the words, and Ned responds with one bitten-off phrase that has Finnegan pressing tight against his windpipe and reaching for his holstered gun. 

John startles forward, but Hughes turns his head, one eyebrow raised, to still him. Pressed to Ned’s temple in only a moment and cocked, the gun glints softly in the light. John thinks of Finnegan, each night, his steady hands cleaning the piece methodically, as though the routine, the rhythm, is his good-luck charm. Behind John, O’Toole kicks at the dirt, nervously.

Hughes hefts the Lewis to the ground, propping it against his thigh like a loyal pet, and says, casually, “Not that I’m opposed to you shooting these lying pigs where we stand, Constable, but there is some procedure to follow.” Finnegan glances over at him, wild-eyed, but nods, swallowing tightly, and lowers his gun. John’s hand doesn’t leave his hip until Finnegan has released the cock on his weapon and holstered it once more.

“Now, boys,” Hughes says, as though settling in for a casual chat over tea. He passes the Lewis to O’Toole, who packs it cautiously away. “We all know this is your barn, and we found the weapons square. There’s no rightful court that wouldn’t convict you.” He paces casually as he speaks; Ned follows each movement with his eyes, hands still raised above his head, but Danny stares down at the ground.

“That being the case, I don’t see how there’s any use in bothering with the whole process,” Hughes says. He sounds — reasonable, nearly, as though he’s doing everyone a favour, and Ned eyes him suspiciously. Hughes lifts his Webley once more, aimed right at Danny’s head, and as John steps forward — _surely he’s not_ — Hughes throws one quick glance over his shoulder. John just catches the wink, which sparks the memory of their conversation in the Crossley earlier — following my lead — and everything is theatre, play-acting and stage direction, so John does, lifts his Webley and aims at the broad of the barn, near enough to seem on point. His hand doesn’t shake.

“If we just take care of you here, it’ll be a lot less fuss for me. I hate fuss. Don’t I hate fuss, Watson?”

“Fuss and paperwork,” John affirms, eyes still tight on the back of Hughes’ head. He thinks — he’s very certain, or nearly — where Hughes will take this, what he means. A show; a bit of a fright. 

“But ye — ye can’t —” Danny O’Brien nearly sobs, frightened, and Hughes strides forward, pressing the Webley tight against his temple, and says, “Can’t I?”

He holds it there for a few long seconds, until — until John’s nearly sure he’s been wrong all this time, that Hughes has gone — wrong — and will kill them where they stand; the gun is cocked, has been, and Hughes’ finger curls toward the trigger, and — and he pulls it back, a few inches, and smiles.

“Aye, perhaps you’re right,” he says cheerfully. “You’re not so important; you’ll only be a bit of paperwork.” He drops his gun hand casually, and John’s fingers uncurl from the butt of his own weapon. “Get them in the truck,” Hughes says, unconcerned, to O’Toole and the other constables, and they rush to comply. 

O’Toole’s face is pale, his hand shaking as he pushes Ned into the back of the Crossley; Finnegan, in contrast, still has a high flush across the broads of his cheeks. “Don’t take as a personal offence,” John councils. “They’re only boys, and angry.”

“Sir,” Finnegan says, sounding unconvinced.

John frowns. “What did they say?”

“Nothing I’d care to repeat, sir,” Finnegan says sharply, and after a moment, John jerks his chin toward the Crossley and says, “Load up, then.” Finnegan nods, some measure of gratitude, and climbs in, and they make their way back to the barracks with their bounty and their prisoners. 

++

They put the boys into the cells in the basement of the barracks, Ned still sneering and angry and Danny wide-eyed. Both are quiet, though, and John has a brief shiver of unease at the broad, assessing sweep of Ned’s eyes as he locks the door on them.

Before the current — troubles — those cells had seldom held anyone other than belligerent drunks and the occasional sheep thief, and they’ve since had reinforced locks added and now, with prisoners, a day-and-night guard. They draw lots for the first on duty; it falls to MacKenzie, an unimpressed life-time constable. John dimly remembers some gruff tales of his joining the force back in the nineties, told in broad Northern accent. MacKenzie takes a seat, rifle leant against his calf, and with some jeers about all he’ll be missing out on, the others depart to celebrate.

Bringing in two of the O’Briens — even if it’s only the little ones — is a coup; there’s little doubt that the older brothers will be angered into some action, and with any luck, they’ll shortly have all five ready to deliver to Dublin Castle, lacking just a bow in their presentation. Hughes has some of the younger constables half-convinced they’ll all be receiving a generous reward and boasts that, should the elder O’Brien sons show their faces, he’ll “Have them on their backs, done in four shots.”

“If only they had a sister,” someone calls broadly. “From what I hear, you’d have her just the same.” A boisterous laugh ripples; Hughes charges the offending constable, grabbing him round the neck and knocking his cap into the ground.

“I’d have your sister just as quick, Blake,” he says, and Blake growls and tries to wriggle from his grasp. “Though she’d beg from more’n four shots, I’ve no doubt.” With a sharp laugh, Hughes releases Blake, who rubs his neck and glares. Hughes grins rakishly and bounds forward, walking backwards along the road to address them at once. 

“And now, my good sirs, we go to celebrate our —” he holds up one finger in a theatrical pause — “that is, _my,_ triumph this joyous evening. So drink and be merry, for tomorrow we fight anew!” The men give an answering cheer and stomp their way down the street to fall, as one, through the door of Golden’s Pub. 

Pints are provided, if grudgingly, and the men spread through the pub, heedless of the other patrons. Hughes drops to a stool next to John, bumping their shoulders together with warmth, and says, loudly, “About time you came along, Johnny boy.” John smiles; Hughes is already on a second pint and settles broadly at the little table, comfortable and sprawling. “Drink up,” Hughes says, clinking their glasses, and John does. 

The beer makes its way to their table effortlessly, Hughes being the king of the hour, and John loses count, drinking down and wiping foam from his lips. His skin buzzes warmly.

At one point, Hughes steps shakily onto the table, one foot braced still on his stool; John laughs broadly as Hughes raises his glass, the crowd around them answering with a bellowing cry, and begins an elaborate speech that ends with him drinking heartily, belching, dropping his glass to shatter on the floor, and jumping down to land, with surprising steadiness, on the ground. “To Cork!” he calls; John’s mind had wandered during the gesturing speech, so it takes him a long, foggy moment to process the words.

“What?” he says, then again, louder, to get Hughes’ attention, and Hughes slaps his shoulder and hauls him to his feet, saying, “ I am bored of this provincial hovel. My greatness demands grander hospitality!”

“Have we drunk all the beer?” John’s cuffs are sticky with it; Hughes still holds his cap aloft, grandly, but lowers it at John’s words.

“And we’ve drunk all the beer,” he confirms. 

John laughs and says, feeling generous, “Alright then, away!” The company cries, as one, “Away!” in answer, and they shove their way out of the pub.

In the end, they don’t make it to Cork, but bump along the road shoved like sardines into one of the Crossleys, singing jauntily. Whoever has been chosen to drive is as sober as the rest of them, and swerves around the tight country lane corners lustily, sending them all barrelling against each other with cries and taunts and generous suggestions as to where the driver can shove various parts of his uniform. 

Their journey is arrested, at some point, by someone — O’Toole perhaps, John’s not certain in the dark — calling out to stop, and the driver brings the Crossley to a skidding halt. “That barn there,” the man calls; it’s not O’Toole, but John can’t place the voice. “It’s Fingal O’Brien’s, the uncle of our two young lads back in the clink.” 

“Is it now?” Hughes’ voice sounds quite close to John, and he realises that he’s who his arm presses tight against. He can feel the broad vibrations of Hughes laughing. “Well, then, boys, I think we all know what we need to do.”

They pour out of the Crossley; John stumbles a bit, but Hughes grasps him at the elbow, bringing him to rights, and they set off across the field. By the time John and Hughes reach the barn, the others have started kicking in doors, smashing windows. Inside, the frightened bray of a horse sounds, and someone runs in, coming out with a lead in his hand, a wild-eyed horse at its end. John has a rough, confused moment to think that the horse, gleaming darkly in the moonlight, with its high-set neck thrown back nervously, is no cart horse, before it rears back and tears free, galloping away into the darkness. 

Guffaws and jeers mingle with the jubilant cries and the wood cracks and splinters under their hands. Hughes tosses a stone to John; he throws it high in the air and catches it, easily, then with a grin rears back to launch it through a window. The glass shatters with a satisfying crack, and Hughes bumps their shoulders together, pleased. 

It’s strange, John thinks, feeling very distant from his own wandering mind, how satisfying the snap of wood is beneath his feet, the pull of nails as siding gives way under his hands. They move as one undulating mass, pushing pulling kicking, as the stripped frame of the barn rises up, skeletal, in the weak moonlight. Someone strikes a match; it glows, vibrant, in the darkness, and the man holds it aloft in brief warning before dropping it. 

It glimmers weakly for a moment before catching a pile of dried straw; the flame flares up, sharply, and they fall back as one with panting grins. They surround the building, still laughing, as the flames lick and spread, and John feels their heat against his cheeks and the backs of his bruised knuckles and breathes in the smoky air. 

“C’mon, then,” Hughes calls, their commander of the evening still, and they pile back in, flushed and stinking and happy.

++

John can’t sleep; it’s only gone two when they arrive back and fall into their beds reeking of beer and sweat and smoke, and his fingers tingle still. He thinks blearily about what the O’Brien boys might do, in retaliation, but shoves it out of his mind. Provoking them into action is, after all, the goal. 

In the cot next to him, O’Toole snores loudly, having fallen into bed face-down with his boots still laced. John drums his fingertips along the edge of his cot and exhales. 

“Oh, go the fuck on.” Hughes’ voice, unexpected and hoarse in the darkness, reaches across to him.

“What?” John hisses.

“Go on to your sweetheart or whoever it is that makes you so fucking —” He doesn’t finish his thought, the bitter edge to his voice bitten off. John stills his fingers. 

“I don’t —”

“Just fucking go,” Hughes repeats, weary now; John has a moment to wonder, blearily, why Hughes sounds so very — so worn, so annoyed — before he swings to sitting and leans down to lace his boots back on again. Hughes falls back onto his cot with an audible thump as John creaks the door open cautiously. 

There’s a guard on at the front door, but he’s young, one of their green recruits shipped in only a few weeks ago, and John smiles broadly at him and waves generally toward the door, saying, “Just need some fresh air, you know — too many men, too much drink in one room.” The constable blinks at him, startled at his presence, but opens the door. 

John pulls out a bicycle indiscriminately, and points it toward Norbury. The night air is colder, clammier than it had been, and it prickles on his exposed skin, leaving him feeling greasy and stale. He wishes it would, instead, revive his blurred thoughts, sharpen his eyes, but the effects of the beer and the buzz of exhilaration remain, stubborn.

At the back of the house, he climbs off the bicycle; it falls, clattering noisily in the gravel, and he grimaces, hauling it up to lean against the wall of the stables. The stables — the laboratory — are unexpectedly dark, and John blinks up at the silent loft, wonderingly, and curses. He supposes Sherlock does need to sleep, at some point, but he hadn’t thought — 

Above him, a voice hisses his name. John looks up, around, finally seeing Sherlock’s tousled head leaning from a second-storey window, the flicker of a candle behind him giving him a strange — and comforting — silhouette, solid and dark where the real Sherlock, the Sherlock John expects, is bright and slippery. 

“Hallo!” John calls, and Sherlock sighs, shushing him, and calls back, softly, “Stay there.”

John purses his lips; Sherlock’s head pulls back, disappears, and in a few moments the servant’s door creaks open, and Sherlock gestures him in.

“Mummy’s a light sleeper,” he says as he lets John push past him. Sherlock sniffs; when John glances at him, just catching his expression in the stripe of moonlight that passes over his face as the door closes, his eyes are narrowed, nose wrinkled up comically. “You’ve been drinking. And —” he sniffs again, bowing his head, his nose quite close to John’s shoulder. “And near a fire. Oh you idiot —” John can feel comprehension filter through Sherlock’s mind: the way he rears back his head, shoulders stiffening, the crack of his knuckles as his fists tighten.

“Arson, John, really?”

“It was just a bit of fun —” John says, defensively, and Sherlock scoffs, audibly, and brushes past him and up the stairs. John falters for a moment, then follows, trying very intensely to keep his too-loud footsteps soft in the silent house.

Through the twists of the servant’s stairs then down a corridor, Sherlock pads, his dressing gown sweeping behind him, brushing John’s shins when he follows too close. He does — follow closely — telling himself it’s due to the dark and the need for stealth, and his every breath is tinged with the sharp lavender-and-lye smell of Sherlock. It’s less ripe, cleaner, here in the house than in the mouldering stables, and lends the scene a dream-like atmosphere, punctuated by their long-stretching shadows flickering down the corridor.

Sherlock pushes through a door, finally, into a room lit by one flickering candle, near the open window. Unlike the sprawling laboratory, Sherlock’s bedchamber is neat, prim even, with a heavy-curtained bed, the bedclothes pushed back, rumpled, and one pillow lumpy, a depression from — from Sherlock’s sleeping head, John thinks, and swallows through his dry mouth. 

“So,” Sherlock says, startling John’s attention away from the wrinkled linens. “What are you doing here, John?”

It had seemed so — so clear, so definite, when John left the barracks, though as he filters the thought through his mind, he remembers no actual purpose to the visit. “I —”

“You’ve been drinking, yes, and on a — what did you call it — ‘a bit of fun’ — burning down someone’s house? No, barn. You’ve had a successful patrol today, some bit of petty policing gone right; you’re gleaming with triumph. How am I doing?”

“Yes,” John says, “yes, quite —”

“And you thought you’d come, and, what, share the joy?”

“No, I — why are you so bothered? I’m sorry for waking you, I just —” John thinks to turn to go, flexes his hand to reach for the door handle, but stops himself. “Is it the fire? You’ve done worse, with your grenades and — no one was hurt, not even the horse — a pretty horse, too—”

“Don’t be absurd; I don’t care about the barn, or the horse, or —” Sherlock interrupts. “I don’t care, don’t you understand? It’s petty, and small, and so — so _idiotic,_ these little retributions, and I thought that you were —” He stops himself, visibly tightening, and takes a step back, further from the dim light of the candle. 

“That I was what?” Sherlock shifts his jaw, looking away, and says nothing. John wants, quite desperately, for Sherlock to finish; to know what he is in Sherlock’s mind and all the ways he’s let him down, now, and all the ways he will in the future. Somehow, he wonders if that person — the man he is in Sherlock’s mind — is more himself than whomever he lives now. 

“Hughes thinks you’re my sweetheart,” he says, the words an awkward rush, and Sherlock looks up, abruptly, and John adds, quickly, “No, I mean — he thinks I have a sweetheart that I — that I visit. When I’m with you.”

Inhaling sharply, his breath a soft whistle, Sherlock flits his eyes over John then away, to the mantle, perhaps — just away. John worries his lip, wishing he would look back.

“Get in the bed,” Sherlock says, abruptly, still not looking, and John says — exhales — “What?” and Sherlock sighs, once more, weary. “You need sleep. You’ve patrol duty in the morning.”

“What about — what about you?”

“Oh, I rarely sleep.” John looks pointedly at the rumpled bed, and clears his throat. “I’ll sleep in a guest room.”

“You don’t want your mother to know I’m here,” John says, feeling very reasonable, and a bit floundering. 

“I don’t want my mother to know you’re here _now,”_ Sherlock corrects. “She’ll know by the morning, anyway. Sleep,” he says again, sweeping one hand toward the bed. John swallows, his limbs suddenly leaden, and bends to unlace his boots. Toeing them off, he straightens and begins to unbutton his tunic, aware of Sherlock’s gaze, which has returned abruptly. John finds his eyes, meets them, and Sherlock holds them for a very — achingly — long moment, then brushes past John and to the door. 

“I’ll —” he starts, fingers lingering on the door frame. John turns his head, and watches how Sherlock’s hand curls around the wood, fingertips just touching the wallpaper. “I’ll wake you early,” he says, and John doesn’t tell him that he always wakes early, an instinct from a farming childhood, and is charmed, somehow, that Sherlock has missed that fact.

“Yes,” John says, agreeing; he wonders if there is a question in the unwavering tone of his voice. There’s one in his mind, certainly. Sherlock nods, sharply, the back of his head glinting damply in the weak candlelight, and goes.

++

John does wake early, as he always does, bleary in the sunlight filtering unfamiliarly through the curtained window. Sitting up, he groans; his head pounds and stomach roils, and his nostrils fill with the stale reek of smoke. The previous night plays through his mind, fractured and confused, and he remembers strange little pieces: the Tans singing, victorious, in the pub, and a rock rough in his palm, and the sparking of a match, and Sherlock’s jaw working, shadowed in the flickering light. 

He remembers — Hughes gruff, and telling Sherlock — and a sickening flush of embarrassment overtakes the nausea. Clamouring out of the bed, he shoves his boots on quickly and shrugs into his tunic, not bothering to do up the buttons, and cautiously opens the door. 

The hallway is deserted, but John misses the door to the servants’ stairs on his first pass. Finding it, revealed by a mere crack in the wallpaper, he creaks it open and makes his way down as quiet as he can. Breathing in relief to see his bicycle still there and the back drive deserted, he pushes off quickly.

The sun is only just breaking the sky, and he makes it back to the barracks with a growling stomach and a clearer head, in enough time to slip into breakfast. Hughes eyes him, but says nothing, making room on the bench and shoving the basket of toast to John silently. John swallows his unbuttered, gratefully, and readies himself for another day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[Lawless Ireland (1920)](http://youtu.be/vkWhvTCpwWM)**
> 
> **1\. Lewis guns.** A light machine gun first used in combat in the Great War, developed by a member of the US Army but produced in England and used widely by the British Army. 
> 
> **2\. ‘A bit of fun.’** The events in this chapter — mock executions, liberal (and unpaid) use of the town resources, especially alcohol, and damage and destruction of property — were some of the main unofficial ways through which the British forces in Ireland maintained and displayed their power. Burning of barns and houses and _actual_ executions were part of the programme of terror backed by implied though not official consent. Impetus behind such acts seems to include “letting off steam,” plain old bigotry, retribution for acts done by the IRA, and frustration with a British government that, for political reasons, continued to refuse to call the “troubles” a war, rather insisting that the recruits were there as police, therefore not allowing the ongoing actual wartime support that many B &Ts and Auxiliaries felt they should have, including increased weaponry, training, and powers of martial law.


	11. Silver Blaze

Sherlock stares at the ceiling for much of the night. Through the meagre wall dividing them, he charts John’s turns as he settles into the bed — Sherlock’s bed — then the faint susurrus of his breathing, laboured and deep with drink. Early, when the sky has only just begun to turn a hazy, sleep-blinking grey, he hears the door to his bedroom open and the pad of footfalls down the hall. Down — pause — back — John misses the door on the first try, but then finds it, eases it open, and descends the stairs, the hesitation in his usually bold step loud and apparent down the hallway. Muzzy and unfocused, Sherlock’s head feels heavy, as though he were the one who’d drunk away half the night.

He waits until the door to the servants’ entrance closes and the crunch of gravel under the tyres of John’s bicycle can be heard, then swings his legs over the edge of the bed. Not bothering to neaten the disrupted bedclothes of the guest room — Maxwell’s eyes are nearly as sharp as his own, and there’s little Maxwell knows that Mummy doesn’t, eventually — Sherlock takes the three long steps between the guest room and the still-cracked door of his own chambers. The sharp, chary scent of a just-extinguished candle lingers; it masks any remaining evidence of the bitter hops on John’s breath, melds with the tarry smoke which clung to his clothes. His presence is there, still, in the haphazard lay of the bedclothes, pulled up and tucked over the pillow, their edges hanging ragged and unkempt, belying John’s hasty care. Sherlock smooths his hand over the coverlet then pulls back, sharply, like he’d snagged a needle, and grasps the edge, ripping the layers off the mattress to deposit in a heap on the floor. 

Only when the mattress is bare, denuded, the pillow a crumpled, limp pile, does he stop, and breathe, and sit on the edge of the bed. The ticking is faded — blue stripes on white — and worn smooth in the centre, evidence of his body and those before him, a strange, ancient relic of the stoic old house. It’s yellowed with age and sweat: his own, and John’s now, too, only traces, and others he doesn’t know. It had smelt of dusty rose petals, he remembers, when he moved down to this chamber from the nursery. Aged eleven, and free of a nanny, finally, with the promise of school, and Dublin, on the air. Hope, pressing in on his ribcage; he wonders if he would recognise the feeling today.

He leaves the bedclothes on the floor for the day girl to sort and dresses. Snappish care: tweed trousers, waistcoat, jacket. His collar stiff against his neck, a tie knotted with the most careless amount of attention to its off-kilter knot. Boots, not brogues, but no hat. He tucks his cigarette case into an inner pocket, a handful of notes into another. He doesn’t breakfast, his body tuned to the tasks ahead.

The facts: a horse, unexpected. Little else, really, than the whispered remembrance of betting slips found in a chest of drawers, tucked between handkerchiefs. Unrelated but for the memory. John’s hand, in his pocket, turning his coins again and again. Sherlock shakes his head. He looks at his watch, though he needn’t; the sun is bright today, and streams full through his easterly window, insisting its morning hour. The races won’t start until noon, but their business — his business — begins much earlier. 

Finally, Maxwell’s footsteps sound on the stairs. Sherlock waits — nine, ten, beyond his own door; they hesitate at the door to the guest room and Sherlock narrows his eyes, but then they begin again, down the hall and round the corner, to Mummy’s room. Sherlock steps into the hallway on caution-hushed feet, leaving his door closed just as it had been with him inside, and takes the servants’ stairs down. The motor keys are kept near the rear door; he hooks them off, tucking them against his palm to stop the clang, and makes his way to the carriage house. 

On his own, he cannot push the car down the drive; all he can hope is to have it started and trundled off without encountering anyone else. It’s not that he’s not allowed, exactly, but the questions are tiresome. He sends up a spray of gravel in the skidding-start of the tyres and grins to the just-broken day in front of him.

The sharp-chilled air cuts at his cheeks through the opened window; Sherlock feels his mind focus, clicking into gear like the slide of a microscope lens falling into place. The drive to Mallow won’t be long, not if the dew-damp roads stay empty and clear of ambuscades. If not, well — it’s not technically forbidden to drive as a private citizen, but with the petrol rationing those who are able are all the more likely to be targeted by IRA forces. Norbury is only kept in supply due to old contacts of Father’s in Cork and Mycroft’s salary.

Sherlock grins, pleased at the thought of Mycroft’s _minor_ government position ensuring a task Mycroft would no doubt find piddling and beneath him. He knows, of course; Sherlock waits each day for a summons to London. Some minor political appointment, some occupation. Suitable to their name and standing under Mycroft’s standards, at the least, if not Father’s. Sherlock shoves his foot down on the accelerator, chasing the thought away. Under the tyres, the road unfurls.

++

Mallow Race Course is marked by a modest sign only; it’s thought, by some, the best ground in the county, though home to little more than local races. Sherlock leaves the car in a meadow off the road and walks toward the stables. In his swagger, he takes on the cant of Victor’s old friend, Fitzwilliam James — Earl of Craven now — a casual shove of his fists in his pockets, a thoughtful, pursing tilt to his head. James was ever one for a wager, his monthly stipend in and out of bookie’s boxes; Sherlock filters through what little he remembers of the man to give his eyebrow an inflected rise, to twist the corner of his lip in just a knowing way.

At this hour, trainers and jockeys are the only inhabitants, their bustle full of camaraderie and not a small amount of raucous ribbing. The horse world is a tight-knit bunch, and Sherlock will no doubt be noticed, but he’s counting on it. 

Milling through the wide hallways of the stables, Sherlock peers into stalls as he passes, a gambler weighing his odds. He can feel skeptical gazes rolling over him, hears the change in the cadence of the chatter as he passes. At one stall, the horse inside jerks its head up sharply at his presence, nostrils flaring. One hand on the edge of the window, Sherlock looks closer. Black, with a distinctive white blaze, the horse — a filly — is slim, verging on skinny, but with fine, long-boned legs and bright eyes. The slate on the door is scrawled with _Silver Blaze,_ a fine enough name, if a bit obvious. Sherlock’s not an expert on horseflesh, but he can see promise in the stretch of her muscles, even under her rather unkempt coat. She flicks her ragged tail and huffs at the scent of his hand, and he reaches to scratch at her forehead.

“Lord Holmes.” The voice is not unfamiliar, though hardly friendly. Sherlock glances up, lets his gaze linger on the man’s hat — worn brim pulled down, flakes of something pale just at the edge, a shiny bare spot haphazardly covered with shoe polish — and not his eyes. The filly startles away at his presence, and Sherlock drops his hand to casually lean on the stall door. “To what do we owe the pleasure?” The man tilts his chin, a sardonic mockery of a bow. His face Sherlock knows, though not well: a groom for John Striker, well-known trainer at the stables near Doneraile. Rather hard-up, if his hat is any indication, and with a new mouth to feed and an unhappy wife going by the collar.

“Well…” Sherlock lets his pause linger until the man huffs, supplying, “Clancy. Geehan.”

“Mr Geehan,” Sherlock continues, letting his smile turn oily, “I wonder if you might tell me about this filly here. She’ll be running the twelve o’clock, I assume.”

“Yes,” Geehan says. His eyes flit between Sherlock and the horse, but he doesn’t move closer.

“Well?” Sherlock prompts. At Geehan’s reticence, he ducks his head closer, putting their eyes on a level. “I’m not asking for anything — unsavory,” he says, voice pitched low and conspiratory. “I simply prefer to know the odds first hand before I play them.” Geehan blinks. He rocks back on his heels but doesn’t step away.

“She’s good,” he says, finally. “Quick, sprightly. But young and untried — this’ll be her first go out on the green.” 

“Ah,” Sherlock says. He lifts his hand away from the door, finally, and just catches Geehan’s shoulders relax. “I’d do better with something — tried, then?” Geehan lifts his eyebrows expressively and jerks his head behind him, to the next stall, where a tall sorrel leans its head through the window, forelock catching the light and ears swiveling with interest. Sherlock takes a step, makes a show of examining the colt’s name plaque. “ _Rasper._ Thank you, Mr Geehan, you’ve been most helpful.” Geehan makes a small, abortive bow — little sarcasm this time — and gestures to the stable door. Sherlock sweeps past, maintaining the broad-shouldered swagger borrowed from his Oxford colleague, and into the light, where the green begins to bustle with preparations.

++

The crowds begin to arrive late in the morning. Bookies set up their windows, scrawling odds on chalkboards hung high for the punters to see; stands selling sausages and meat pies and beer open their shutters; women shade their faces with broad parasols and men wave their bowler hats to draw attention. Despite the unofficial race truce, the air breathes with latent tension, silence rolling in waves in the wake of a soldier’s passing: the long strides of an Auxie, gun on each hip, sending women to cluster together and men to turn their backs. 

Sherlock keeps one eye to the ground behind the starting gates as he roams, nonchalance in the lineaments of his body, and surveys the crowd with more habit than attention. He’s biding his time, really, to see what proof appears in favour of his current hypothesis. 

Punters are queued up, ready to part with their money, restive and eager to get their bets in before the first starting pistol goes. Sherlock’s gaze sweeps over them and beyond — then back, for he knows the dark-gold hair under that peaked cap, knows the line of those shoulders.

Hand in one pocket, John stands in the queue for the bookkeeper’s window. Every line of his body is pulled taut: his shoulders set square and heavy, the tense cant of his hip as he favours his bad leg, just a little, the nervous drumming of his fingers against the coin in his pocket. Still hungover, no doubt, but also — Sherlock shakes his head. John had shown few doubts in the cool darkness of the small hours; there is little sense in imagining any now. 

Sherlock steps behind him and leans in to murmur, just behind John’s ear, “Having a flutter?” To his credit, John doesn’t startle. He turns his head enough to see Sherlock, the rise of his cheekbone near Sherlock’s mouth. He blinks. Sherlock holds for a moment, then straightens, takes one small, rocking step back. As Sherlock’s shadow passes off John’s face, the sun reveals a tinge of pink splashed across his cheekbones and catches the uncertain lift of his eyebrows, but just as quickly his face settles, mild and inscrutable. As good as a message passed between them, whether John intended so or not: they were not going to discuss the previous evening’s events.

“Perhaps,” John answers, as though Sherlock’s question hadn’t been entirely obvious. The coins in John’s pocket jangle against his thigh. “What’s it to you?”

Sherlock raises his eyebrow, peers at the betting boards. “You fancy number sixteen for the win, no doubt; odds are good though not obvious and you’re a cautious enough better. Well, you are now; lost a bit more than intended in the past, I’ve no doubt. A little won’t hurt, now, that’s what you tell yourself, and you’ve certainly the wages now to put a bit down and still have something for the future. So, wildcard bets only when you’re feeling very flush indeed, and by the way you favour your leg today, you’re not in the most daring of spirits. You’ve decided on, what, half a crown on Pugilist to win, maybe another on twenty-seven, Desborough, in the next race, but little more than that. How am I doing?” He drops his eyes back to John, to John’s face gone lined and uncertain, far older than his years for a moment, and then — calm.

“They’re fair odds on sixteen and twenty-seven both,” John says simply, but he shifts his weight enough to stand square, no fleeting grimace appearing.

Sherlock scoffs. “Yes, yes.” He doesn’t ask, but by the way the corner of John’s mouth twitches, he knows he needn’t. It should be irritable, being so obvious, but then John’s smile splits, teeth showing, and any small annoyance is lost in the coughing laugh John gives, dry in the back of his throat, and the way he says, “Yes, fine,” conceding and pleased. 

“Half a crown for each race,” he confirms, “and I’m bloody tired after last night — you know your mattress is nearly as bad as the barracks?” He doesn’t pitch his voice low, miraculously, and Sherlock’s eyes flutter wide, for a moment, before he narrows them and waves one hand, unconcerned.

“I don’t sleep often.” He wonders if John has even thought of the implications of his words, should they be overheard. Breaking curfew — after a drunken joy-ride, no less — is one thing, a fine only, but sodomy. Well. Ireland is a far cry from Oxford. 

“Sherlock?” John peers at him, curiously, and Sherlock rouses his thoughts away. 

“Make your bet, John; I’ve need of your eyes.” John touches his hand to his pocket, half-turns away.

“No,” he says, turning back, “I’ve a feeling you’ve a more interesting gamble for me today.”

Sherlock bites his smile away, tight behind his lips, and nods briskly. “Very well.” He strides away, aware of John’s sure steps beside him; his decided, even stride Sherlock tucks into a corner of his mind to peruse later.

The stands are only half-full and people mill about the yard, a low thrum of activity. The races are hardly important, really, a quotidian running with horses of mediocre standing. Still, by afternoon the stands will have filled out, raucous and loud, as the crowds — and their appetites, and their thirsts, and their losses — grow. Never mind the Catholic Church; here the races serve the masses their opiates. 

Rather than take up a post by the fence, as they had at those last races in April, Sherlock leads John weaving through the crowd. Snippets of conversation float by, netted and reeled in to be categorised later. Gossip, mostly — he’s a fool who thinks only silly women gossip, for it’s as likely to hear gleeful rancour on the plight of a neighbour from a man’s mouth as a woman’s. He doesn’t notice that John’s stopped until he’s gone three more strides.

Turning, he finds John in conversation with Colonel Moran, whose dry laugh sets Sherlock’s teeth on edge. He has John’s shoulder clasped with one hand, the other shaking John’s hand amiably, as if confirming a deal; Sherlock steps in closer, too close, really, his elbow brushing John’s arm, and John drops Moran’s hand and shifts. Not away from Sherlock, though, he notes, and his attention at the bump of John’s elbow nearly distracts him from Moran’s words. 

“— Silver Blaze, I’d say, though don’t spread it around. I’ll feel a fool if she spooks at the first gate, green as she is.” John laughs; Sherlock breathes in sharply. 

“Moran’s giving me tips,” John says, grinning to Sherlock. It’s not quite unfettered, tight still at the edges, Sherlock notes with some pleasure, but he nods as though very interested in Moran’s racing expertise. “I suppose I should listen; I’ve seen the coin he comes home with after a good day’s races.”

“Silver Blaze, you were saying,” Sherlock says, just cutting off John’s self-deprecating words. “This is her first race, is it not?”

Moran inclines his head, affirmative. “I saw her running in practice, up visiting Striker’s stable some weeks back. That line’s prone to weakness of the hocks, but she’s fast as a blaze.” He finishes with another of his dry laughs, and Sherlock grits his teeth.

“Yet no one’s heard of her.”

Moran shrugs. “These provincial stables,” he says, dismissively. In the stands behind them, a shout goes up as the noon race is announced. “If you’ll excuse me, that’s my race.” Moran dips his head to John, nods more curtly to Sherlock, who doesn’t respond, and makes his way to the fence.

“What was he saying to you?”

“Hmm? Oh, only that he’d heard he missed a good dust-up last night.” John shifts — off his bad leg. Not so comfortable with his actions in the light of day, then. 

“Interesting,” Sherlock says, grasping John’s elbow to lead him to a spot nearer the track. John follows willingly.

“Is it?”

“Well, if my evidence is correct, your little dust-up nearly cost your friend there a pretty little scheme.”

“What?” Sherlock opens his mouth to explain, but just as they reach the fence the starting pistol sounds. He tips his chin toward the horses, indicating that he’ll continue in a moment. 

Just as Sherlock expected, the little green filly, Silver Blaze, takes the race by two generous strides. Biting down the grin that threatens to flicker, Sherlock strides away from the track, finished for the day. No need to make a scene here, after all, when a few well-placed words will sort it all out.

“What was that all about?” John asks, his voice a murmur under the excitement of the crowd, keyed up after such a spectacular upset.

“Silver Blaze doesn’t exist.” Sherlock weaves through the spectators, toward the meadow where the car has been parked all morning.

“What? We just saw her win.”

“We just saw a horse win. Not Silver Blaze. I’d have to consult last season’s lists, but I’m certain you’ll find a black filly, smallish for her age, who did well but unremarkably so in all her races.”

“She’s a ringer?”

Sherlock nods, lifting one hand to show John the tips of his gloved fingers. “The blaze was painted on — well-blended, but easy enough to tell in close proximity if one was looking.” John peers at Sherlock’s hand, where flecks of white paint — matching those on Geehan’s hat brim — linger. “No doubt she showed potential but couldn’t compete with her size last year, so the O’Briens — with the Colonel’s help — decided they’d try her again.”

“Hang on, the O’Briens?”

Sherlock clicks his tongue, frowning slightly at John, who raises his eyebrows. “Obviously,” Sherlock says, with a sigh. “Not enough time to properly groom her after she was re-captured last night, and her tail was singed off. Not to mention the very distinct aroma of char still on her coat.”

“She’s the horse from last night, then.”

“Precisely.”

“And Moran?”

“In on it, of course, it’s obvious by his bet earlier. By keying up some cautious excitement around it, he helps control the odds in her favour.” They reach the motor; Sherlock leans on the bonnet and waits for John’s praise. 

It is not forthcoming, however; John frowns, looking rather puzzled. “I’ll turn them into the racing commission,” Sherlock reassures, and John glances up, clearing his expression.

“Not that, it’s just —” He looks over his shoulder, across the meadow to the teeming race grounds. “Not certain what to make of Moran, is all.”

“He’d hardly be the first to try and fix the odds to his own benefit.”

John nods. “Don’t like cheats, is all.” His lips thin out; he looks at a spot somewhere past Sherlock, distracted. Shoving off the bonnet, Sherlock claps him on the shoulder, aware at once that he intends, with his clasp, to replace that of Moran, earlier. John looks up at him, expression brightening. 

“Come on, then. If you’ve the rest of the afternoon off, we may as well make good use of it. I’ve an experiment that could use an extra set of hands.”

“Not literally, I hope,” John says, letting Sherlock’s hand linger. 

“Well —” Sherlock says, grinning, and John’s laughter rings bright against the dull roar of the gambling crowds.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[Horse Racing in Ireland (1920)](http://youtu.be/8kOurGv__Kg)**
> 
> **1\. Mallow Race Course:** Cork Racecourse Mallow, as it is now known, technically opened in 1924, but organised racing in the Mallow area (about 35 kilometres north of Cork) as far back as 1777, so I feel I’m not taking too many liberties in giving them a formal, if small, racecourse in 1920. Interestingly, a race between two gentlemen in 1752 in the area around Mallow gave us the term _steeplechasing_ , as the racers in this case ran from the steeple of the church in Buttevant to that in Doneraile. 
> 
> Also note that though I know a bit about horses, I’m far from an expert on racing or gambling! Any mistakes are my own.
> 
> Finally, apologies for the delay! I was traveling last week, and posting slipped my mind. Good news is that I should be able to still get a chapter up next week, to keep us on our no-major-holidays posting schedule, so you'll get chapters two weeks in a row!


	12. Come and Have a Bathe

_August 1920_  
 _Macroom, Co. Cork_

John’s polishing his boots and giving a good thought to a drink at the pub later when they get the news of the attack. The barracks in nearby Ballyhooly attacked in broad daylight, with only two men on guard and the rest out on patrol, and a good stock of guns taken. They’ve called on Macroom’s division to add a few bodies to the search party, so John and Finnegan make their way over, awkwardly tandem on a motorbike. 

In Ballyhooly, they’re greeted by half-a-dozen annoyed Irish constables and ten more Tans from other neighbouring towns. A pair of the Tans jeers, mocking the Irish constables caught with their trousers down, and privately John half-agrees, but the sobering faces of the Ballyhooly constables stills his tongue. Four at least are old Peelers, long in service, gruff and grizzled, and though the other two have Finnegan’s youth, they seem more charged than rattled by their experience.

“Did you know the man who led the rebels?” Finnegan asks one of the Peelers, a burly man with an enormous ginger moustache.

“Course I did,” the man says, nearly affronted. “Wasn’t he like a baby brother to me? It’s Paddy O’Shea.”

The men glance at each other; John thinks they shouldn’t be surprised. Rumour has maintained that the last six barracks attacks in the county have been O’Shea’s work. That, and at least two ambushes with half a dozen casualties each, and the murder of a county inspector in his bed. He’d be a good prize to bring in.

Finnegan sighs. “RIC all over the county’s been on his tracks.”

“Yes, but —” the Constable grins, his moustache twitching. “I’ve an idea where he might be.”

“And you’ll lead us to him, just like that?” John raises an eyebrow. 

“Sure I will, Johnny Bull. Me brother — me brother, mind, me kin — died at Athlone, under Paddy’s command.” John swallows, and doesn’t ask which side his kinship brother had been on. They’re slippery ties, allegiances in war.

They head out in two Crossleys, an array of Lewis guns minding all directions; the rest of the men are well armed with rifles and pistols both. They’re not a mile gone when the slow drizzle turns to rain; the men, in the back of the open-top vehicles, curse the foul Irish weather and turn up their collars. It drips off John’s cap, down his neck and under his shirt. 

Detours are necessary: one road greets them with a gaping hole, dug right across the width, so they circle around, take another turning, only to find it punctuated by a felled tree. At each obstacle, they sigh, weary: it’s a lucky road indeed, in this county, in this age, that is unimpeded. Consulting both an Ordinance Survey map and the ginger-haired Peeler, they manage to loop around until they’re headed roughly south-south-west again, and know they’ve reached the right place when a warning bullet glances off the back fender of the Crossley in the lead. 

Half the men duck down instinctively, the other half sighting their rifles already, trying to find a target. They’re walled on either side by forest, though, and John knows the men they hunt are well versed with the rhymes and patterns of the woods. He peers into the darkness nonetheless, eyes keen to any movement, and keeps his rifle up.

The Crossleys continue, though slower, and no more shots come. John’s beginning to think it was a rogue shooter when he sees an object fly out from the woods; it arcs over the front of the bonnet and rolls down, falling to the ground, and John’s shouting, “Grenade!” just as the driver realises, attempting to reverse. The vehicle stalls, and John throws himself against Finnegan, next to him, unmoving, and forces them both to the floor of the vehicle. Two other men follow — not enough, not all — when the grenade goes, throwing the Crossley back and up.

John’s shoulder hits hard against the floor, which falls away, or lifts as he falls, or — the world twists, hot, and he lands, solid body on solid ground, and something — someone — lands on top of him. The world is silent and dark for three long heartbeats before John realises it’s his ears, deafened by the explosion, and grit in his eyes. He opens them, with pain, and grasps the body next to him. It’s still moving, they’re shaking together, then he feels a hand around his wrist as he’s pulled to standing. 

It’s Finnegan, who pats down his front and is laughing, maybe, or grimacing, his face twisted, and saying something, John’s not sure, but through the fog of his ears ringing he hears gunshots, quick, _bang bang bang_ in threes, and he swings to meet them. 

Rebels emerge from the trees on both sides, shooting; John grabs Finnegan, and they drop, together, behind the wreckage of the Crossley and shoot over the top of its protective barricade. The leading Crossley is still upright, and the men in the back have dropped into defencive positions, shooting from both sides. The road, nestled in the crux of a valley, offers little natural protection, and the advancing rebels have the cover of the thick woods; John hears the startled cries of his fellow officers as they’re hit. Beside him, Finnegan’s rifle clatters against the wreckage of the Crossley, his hands shaking so badly he can’t find the trigger. John ignores him, lifting his own gun just enough to aim above the barricade, and takes out three rebels in three successive shots before the leader realises and a volley of bullets find him.

He drops down again, head below the rubble; across from him one constable is down, eyes open and glassy, and the four remaining continue to shoot when they can. John reloads, takes a breath, and returns to firing. The siege continues but, despite their tactical disadvantages, the officers slowly gain the upper hand as the rebels by necessity move closer, away from their protective cover. John’s aim is true and each man he hits goes down. The rebel commanding officer turns, advancing on John’s position, and as he nears, John recognises Paddy O’Shea. 

“Finnegan,” he hisses, and beside him Finnegan startles, looking at him with wide, glassy eyes. There’s nothing for it; only six men remain from their vehicle, and the other four are engaged in a volley on the other side. “I need you to cover me.” Finnegan swallows and nods, the direct order helping bring comprehension back to his eyes. John checks the cylinder of his Webley and reloads, and crawls to the mess that once was the cab of the vehicle. In the torn metal he manages to find one Lewis gun still intact, magazine full, and he leans out the shattered window and pulls the trigger to test it. The spray of gunfire takes out the kneecaps of one rebel and John grins. 

Continuing forwards, through the torn-open front of the cab, on forearms and knees with the Lewis gun cradled in the crux of his elbows, avoiding the still-hot rubble of the engine, he drops down to the ground behind the twisted remains of the bonnet. The rebels have split their ranks, flanking the vehicles to approach the weakly-protected rear, which means the space between the two Crossleys is left open. Still on his knees, John crawls to the edge of the road, moving into a crouch only once he reaches the woods, and approaches a group of four rebels, and O’Shea, from the rear. 

The Lewis fires a neat line of bullets that take out two rebels and in two steps, John’s behind O’Shea, Webley cocked and at the nape of his neck. “Cease fire!” he shouts, and the rebels nearest to him hear and swing their guns in his direction. “Cease fire, or I’ll shoot him,” he says, calmly, and as expected, none of them lower their guns. O’Shea straightened his shoulders. 

“We’re all willing to die for our country, Englishman,” he says, his tone measured. “They won’t back down, even at my death.”

“Hmm,” John says. “Well, then —” he pulls the gun away, giving O’Shea enough time to turn his head, then crashes it down on his temple; the man collapses to the ground. “You’re under arrest,” he says calmly. The rebel to his left advances a step; John’s bullet hits his shoulder and he drops to his knees. 

O’Shea’s arrest has provided enough of a distraction to allow the officers to advance, covering the rebels who, reluctantly, give up their arms. They’re arrested and piled into the remaining Crossley; John and three other men get in to act as guards, and the others follow, grumbling, on foot. O’Shea’s conscious again, but shaky on his feet, and John lends his arm to steady him. As he lifts him up to step into the back of the Crossley, O’Shea stumbles, falls back, and before John can help him regain his balance, a shot is fired, and he drops, the weight of his body dragging John down. John lands heavy on O’Shea’s body; the top of his skull is missing, brain matter splattered on the ground. 

John looks up, wide-eyed, to see the ginger-moustached Peeler holstering his gun. “Shot trying to escape,” he says, flatly, and jumps down from the Crossley. 

John’s stunned, his throat hollow and burning. He scrambles up and charges the Peeler. “We had him, you bastard! You can’t just —”

The man throws a punch, catching John in the ribs. John throws his shoulder against the man’s sternum, tackling him to the ground. They land together, John punching before his breath is back, taking the man in the jaw before he twists, flipping them over so John’s face down and pinned under his greater weight. 

“You don’t understand, Johnny Bull, this isn’t your fecking fight.”

“You can’t —” John protests, voice muffled by the ground. The Peeler shoves him once more before standing, and John rolls over, into a crouch, waiting for another blow. The Peeler stands back, though, shaking his head. “We arrested him,” John says, spitting blood. “He deserves due process of law.”

“He deserves to be killed like the dog he is,” the Peeler responds. Around them, the rest of the Constabulary stands, wary. 

John begins to advance, but Finnegan steps between them. “Leave it, Watson.” John narrows his eyes. “It’s just —” Finnegan spreads his arms; the gesture encompasses the spread of bodies on the ground, the torn wreckage from the grenade. “Leave it,” he says again, with finality. John grinds his teeth but nods, not looking at the Peeler.

“Move out,” he says, not caring that he’s not the officer in charge. “You four, stay with the dead. We’ll send a truck back for the bodies.” He climbs up into the Crossley and slaps the side, signalling to the driver. The ride back is rough and quiet.

At the barracks in Ballyhooly, the Sergeant in charge puts two constables on processing the prisoners, and takes John and the other two guards aside for statements.

“O’Shea?” The other constables are silent and, John realises, waiting for him to decide what to say.

He swallows. “Shot trying to escape, sir,” he says, bile in his throat. The sergeant eyes him for a moment, then nods. 

“How many casualties?”

“Six our side, thirteen theirs.” John looks straight ahead. 

“Right. Well done, men. I’ll want written reports tomorrow, but you’re free to go for now.” John turns heel and leaves, not waiting for the other two constables. The town is small, and it’s easy to find a pub around the corner. 

Inside, the pub is quiet, only a few men scattered throughout. The barman ignores John until he thumps his fist on the bar and leans, just enough that the butt of his gun is revealed. Grudgingly, the barman steps down to him, wordlessly pulling the ordered pint. 

“And a whiskey,” John says, and the barman nods curtly, pours a miserly two fingers. John slams it back, then slaps his coins down on the surface of the bar. He picks up his pint and retreats to a table in the corner, walls at his back and facing the door. He drinks steadily, and slowly the men around him begin to speak again, though their voices are muted. 

John stretches his hand on the worn tabletop; it’s steady and firm, muscles remembering the grip of his Webley and the smooth pull of the Lewis gun’s trigger. He counts the men he felled: seven total, eight with O’Shea, most of them dead and the rest not likely to fight again soon. O’Shea’s body falling, pulling him down, troubles his mind; but hadn’t he thought, when he had the Webley at O’Shea’s neck, how easy it would be to take him down right then, to avoid a trial, to cow his men. He’d shot men in the back before, not just O’Shea’s men today, and slept fine. 

He swallows the last mouthful of bitter and stands; the bar once more goes silent at his movement, but he leaves unmolested. 

++

As if in defiance of John’s distracted mind, patrols for the next three days are uneventful, lacking any action for his tense shoulders, his tight fists, his mind coloured by the pulp of O’Shea’s brain matter and blood. He’s stretched too thin, skin tight over bones, mouth wet and coppery with anticipation, the creaking of his teeth earning him sidelong glances from Hughes in the hateful still of the Crossleys. 

The note, when he receives it, makes him grin for more than just Sherlock’s hurried hand and impatient mind. _Luncheon. Hateful. Require your presence._ Tucked next to it, an unexpected deference, is a card in Lady Holmes’ hand inviting him formally.

The weather is nearly equatorial for Ireland, and Lady Holmes celebrates by hosting tea with a few neighbouring families on the veranda. He’s still not precisely appropriate company – he’ll never be an officer – but Lady Holmes seems to derive a certain delight in flouting the expectations of her class and skirting the edge of the proper. Much like her son.

The sun shines and fades as it moves behind clouds and through trees; John is comfortable in his uniform, but the ladies swaddle themselves with fine shawls to stave off the still-present chill. John’s seated between Molly Hooper, the undertaker’s daughter, who, it turns out, is a distant cousin of Lady Holmes, and a Mrs Cubitt, an American who only makes conversation with her husband, though she has to speak across the table to do so. 

Sherlock is at the far end, wearing a cream-coloured jumper and slouching languidly in his chair. His hair is limp with the humid weather and falls into his eyes; he scrapes it back with impatience every few minutes. He ignores the rest of the table, including the daggered looks shot in his direction by his mother, but when he glances up to catch John looking at him, a hint of a grin plays on his lips. John feels his cheeks flush slightly, but he doesn’t look away. Mycroft isn’t present; Lady Holmes mentions he’s returned to London and work, and John can see Sherlock hold back a retort.

At the end of the meal, once John has had an awkwardly enthusiastic discussion with Molly about the effects of mustard gas on skin, and the guests have begun to stir, Sherlock bolts from his chair, over the veranda, and, leaping down the steps, makes his way to the far end of the garden. John has no reason to think Sherlock still requires his company, but he’s certain he cannot take another person telling him how _awful, how simply awful, all these troubles are,_ as if they knew, so he makes his excuses and follows.

He catches Sherlock up at a grassy expanse of lawn-turned-tennis-court. Sherlock’s legs are thin in their starched flannels, his clavicle pronounced in the over-stretched collar of his jumper, and he hits a series of balls idly against the net, with a careless lack of form. He looks up to see John coming toward him and raises his racquet high, tosses one of the balls up, and hits it lazily over. John catches it with one hand – it stings, a bit, the velocity deceptive – and throws it back. Sherlock lifts his racquet and bounces it up off the strings, catching the ball on its fall. 

“No murders today, then?” John asks teasingly, and Sherlock makes a moue of annoyance, and doesn’t answer the question.

“Play with me,” he says instead, imperious, not a request. John narrows his eyes and watches Sherlock bounce the ball against the grass. He shrugs and picks up the spare racquet leaning against the net post and gets in position.

Sherlock plays, unsurprisingly to John, with speed and precision. What’s less expected is the ferocity of his competitive spirit. John loses the first set spectacularly, and at the end of it, Sherlock crosses to the net and passes the ball over, looking disgustingly pitying. 

That resolves John’s will enough, and though he can’t stop Sherlock from driving the ball into far corners, making him run far more than his bad leg generally allows, he can return it unpredictably, enough to keep Sherlock guessing. John wins the next set by a point and a slight grin twitches at the corners of Sherlock’s mouth.

The last set they play to game point four times before Sherlock wins on a return dropped neatly just over the net when John was still coming up from the back after a long volley. They’re both panting at the end, sweat dripping down John’s neck and between his shoulder blades under his uniform. It’s a far cry from any other games of back garden tennis he’s ever played. 

Sherlock drops his racquet and jumps the net, jogging up to John with an easy, loping grace, and slaps him on the shoulder. “Fair game, old chap,” he says, the endearment teasing. “There’s a pond in the wood that’s perfect for a bathe.” He doesn’t ask, but tilts his head and takes off at a brisk walk, clearly expecting John to follow.

John does.

The pond is near idyllic, bordering on fanciful. A wide depression in the forest floor, it’s fed by a lively brook complete with a short, bubbling waterfall. The grass around it is the same vivid, vibrant green that seems to cover most of Ireland, but within the wood, dappled by weak sunlight filtered through leaves, the colour takes on a nearly magical quality, like something out of the more charming – and less bloody – myths he keeps being told about the island’s history. Nonetheless, he catches himself casting an eye through the surrounding trees, sharp for the glint of a rifle or a patch of uniform, but all that lurks in the shadows seems to be chirping birds.

Sherlock strips off his clothes – jumper, trousers, socks, drawers, singlet – and splashes into the water, ungainly. His skin is very, very white and his hair very, very dark; his cock hangs, slim and long, between his legs, and, without his clothing, his body is angular, his muscles sinewy. He gestures to John impatiently, then ducks under the water, coming up with a splash and his hair slicked back. 

John looks both ways, though there’s no one there, and leans to unlace his boots. He removes his uniform with more care than Sherlock had his clothing, and lays it over a shrub. His skin is pale, too, though not so fair as Sherlock’s; after years in trenches, in hospital, in the cursed rain clouds of Ireland, it’s lost any glow he’d maintained from his farm-bred childhood. On his bared shoulder the scar glows red, angry.

He steps into the pond and Sherlock swims over to him, on his back, spouting great mouthfuls of water up like a live fountain. Sherlock looks at him, upside down, lashes darkened by the water making his eyes seem endless. “C’mon, then,” he says, and John ducks under, comes up laughing at the sharp chill. They swim around lazily for a few long minutes, acclimatizing.

“Your shoulder,” Sherlock says, splintering the cool sounds of water lapping against their skin. He sounds far away, muffled by the water in John’s ears.

“What?”

“Your _shoulder_ was wounded,” Sherlock clarifies, sounding affronted. “You told me it was your leg.”

“You assumed; I didn’t correct you.”

“Hmph.” John can hear Sherlock’s movements as he stands, can just see his movement from the corner of his eye as he pushes through the water, waist-deep, to come closer and loom over John. He resists the urge to duck under, to cover himself, aware that in his stretched, floating pose, he is bare, uncovered but for the ebbing skiff of water across his skin. He blinks at Sherlock, trying not to brush against his thigh as he fins his hands to stay afloat. 

Sherlock jabs, unexpectedly, at John’s thigh.

“Hey —” John does drop down, under the water, in surprise, before Sherlock’s hand grasps the underside of his thigh and hauls it back up. “Get off,” John says, shoving at him. Sherlock blinks, dragging his eyes to John’s, and lets go of his leg.

John stands, finally, panting. Beneath his feet the ground is silty, soft, and Sherlock’s eyes on his shoulder are sharp-edged. “You didn’t injure your leg at all. You —” His brow furrows, deep, and John straightens unconsciously. 

“No, not — not as such. It just — look, I can’t explain it, I don’t —”

“No,” Sherlock interrupts. “It’s fine — it’s interesting. You feel pain, though? Real pain.”

Glancing up at Sherlock then away, John shifts. “Yes,” he says, shortly, and Sherlock breathes out, “Fascinating.”

“It’s not —”

Sherlock’s gaze meets his sharply, and he opens his mouth then closes it, pausing, then says, “I apologise. I did not mean to —”

“It’s fine,” John interrupts; anything to keep Sherlock’s eyes from turning soft, pitiful. They don’t; they stay on John, sharpish and grey-green like the water around them, considering. Sherlock nods and takes a step back, lowering his body back into the water as though stepping back into some moment of peace, far beyond and before wars and broken flesh and torn memories. Hesitantly, John follows, willing himself to feel the water slipping against his skin, to hear the quiet rustles of the woods, to breathe like he’s taking in the damp, warm air of the forest and not the bitter, smoke-ridden miasma of the front.

John’s closed his eyes, floating on his back, feeling the soft, cold eddies of their movements splash against his chest, when a sudden tug to his ankles pulls him under. He strikes out, captures Sherlock’s arm in one hand then twists an arm around his neck, pulling them both up to gasp for air. His breath skitters across John’s jaw, and he’s grinning, broadly; it’s as much of an apology as John can stand, and he feels his own mouth split wide, teeth wet and cold against the air. Sherlock turns in his grasp, strikes out one leg, and captures John’s, pulling them close together and under once more. 

When they surface again, they’re both laughing, chest-to-chest and legs entwined and faces all too close and Sherlock grins and tilts his hips and grinds their bodies together and, jesus, John’s hard, harder than he’s ever been, with a girl or on his own, and so is Sherlock. 

Sherlock rocks against him again and his hand has found John’s hip and John’s mouth has fallen dumb. 

Is that, is that what these Irish boys are like, is that what they do? John forgets, for a moment, Sherlock’s Oxford education and his plummy tones in the all-encompassing thought of his body, slick and hard and cold against his, and of everything he’s ever heard in church. Is that what Sherlock’s fingertips, brushing against the fabric at John’s elbow, at his shoulder, at the bare — bare and warm — skin at his wrist, what Sherlock’s mouth, smiling when there’s no one else near, what John’s tongue, hot and heavy in his mouth, what John’s steady hand and flexed fingers and thoughts to touch — touch, and graze, and grasp — meant? 

Sherlock mouths along his neck; it’s wet, wet, wet, half pond and half saliva, but it’s warm, it’s his living body against John’s, and John slots his forehead into the crook of Sherlock’s shoulder. Suddenly, Sherlock’s hand is between them, is on John, and he bolts back, like his blood’s been replaced with live electric wires.

“I can’t, I – oh god.” His hand scrubs over his face, drops to his neck; there’s a spot there, just there, that is still warm and swollen, and he shakes.

“You were doing just fine,” Sherlock says, and steps toward him. John stumbles back, holds up a hand to ward him off. _Begone, sinner, I cast thee out, demon,_ he thinks nonsensically. He’s not Catholic but casual Church of England, more habitual than faithful, and the vehemence of the voice in his mind surprises him. 

“No,” he says firmly. “I don’t – I’m not like that.” He shakes his head, keeps shaking it as he backs away. Dragging under the surface, his fingers flex, grasping against the resistance of the water with the ache to — no. Not to touch, no — not to — 

Sherlock’s expression tightens. “I rather think –” he starts, and gestures toward – toward John, under the water – “I rather think you might be,” he finishes, and his voice isn’t teasing, or sarcastic, or straightforward, but harsh, edged with malice. John’s blood, his viscera and his nerves, are cold; but not chilled by the water.

“No,” John says again. His words unnecessary, cutting; his tongue feels clumsy, superfluous, unneeded, and he cannot bear the sharp-glass cut of Sherlock’s eyes on him. “No. But I, I won’t –” his gaze flicks down to the water, then back up again, to catch Sherlock’s eye. “I won’t say anything. No one need know.” The words push out, insulting in their self-same arrogance. Sherlock draws himself up, tight as a bowstring, as a tripwire, braced like the pin of a live grenade. 

“Oh, that _is_ a relief,” Sherlock answers dryly, and steps around him, clamours out of the pond. John turns, trying to find something else to say, but is distracted by Sherlock’s form as he dresses. He pulls his drawers on impatiently; they cling to his still-wet body, outlining the firm muscles of his thighs and the rounded curve of his arse. Drops of water roll off his too-long curls and down his neck, bumping over the ridges of his vertebrae as he bends to grab his trousers. The soles of his feet are still dirty from the silty bottom of the pond, and he shoves them into his trousers impatiently, like a sullen child, and John feels an ache in his throat.

“Sherlock, come now, it’s not –”

“It’s fine,” Sherlock says, without looking at him. “You’ll find your own way back, I trust? With autumn coming, I’m sure you’ll be far too busy on patrols to bother visiting, so, goodbye.” Sherlock picks up his shoes and jumper and begins to make his way toward the path, toward Norbury, barefoot and in his singlet and still impossibly wet, and John struggles out of the water.

“Sherlock, wait!” he calls, tugging on his trousers, but the other man doesn’t stop, and before John can get himself into at least a somewhat respectable state, he’s disappeared into the trees. 

John slips out by the back road, uncertain what he would say to Sherlock even if he did catch him up. He manages to put himself back together by the time he reaches the barracks, and if his still-damp head is noticed, it’s not remarked upon.

He tries to put Sherlock out of his mind after that, through supper and an evening darts game, and mostly succeeds until he’s in his cot in the dark evening. In the dark, whuffling breaths and snores punctuating the air, his stomach roils and twists. The chill of the pond water lingers, like he hasn’t dried all evening, and the sting of Sherlock’s hand, on his shoulder, grasping his thigh, on his — on his — it leaves his skin tight and prickling, like the early edge of mustard gas. Destructive; eating away at his layers; insidious. 

He’s hardly naive of the ways of men, no blushing innocent; there were the famous cases, the Oscar Wildes, and John had even known a few soldiers who’d taken relief with each other, quietly and in the very few dark, private corners the military allowed, though it was decidedly not discussed. Close quarters provide unwanted intimacies, after all, and he has no illusions that they give cover to those intimacies more desired, as well.

He wasn’t blind to Harry’s bond with Clara, nor the nature of her friends, the sly men from whom he’d won — and lost — at the card table. But that isn’t John. On the farm, he’d grown up with a healthy appreciation for what a male and female together could do, and he’d had a fair few sweethearts –– some sweeter than others. Men were friends, comrades-in-arms, but he’d never looked at another man – in that way. He’d never — he’d never — never considered the closeness of Sherlock’s body to his, the brush of their arms together or his long-fingered grip on John’s elbow — never. Sherlock was only odd, that’s all; landed, moneyed; Irish. Different. To John; to everyone. 

It needn’t mean anything; he won’t mention it again, and Sherlock is young. He’ll forget.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[Ireland’s Boisterous Weather (1921)](http://youtu.be/UtbG8S2Z9NY)**
> 
> **1\. Come and have a bathe.** Title shamelessly taken from the best scene, bar none, in all of English literature or film: the [swimming scene](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ltOPfmlUcUA) from _A Room with a View_. Do yourself a favour and watch [the whole movie](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGiVwxIw_pA) if you haven’t.
> 
> **2\. Peeler:** I’ve used this a few times before, but if you don’t know, it’s a slang/informal term for members of the RIC, after Sir Robert Peel, who, as home secretary, instituted the first modern police force in the United Kingdom. The term is more pejorative now, but around the turn of the century up until 1920, it was used as a self-descriptor by constables.
> 
> **3\. Is that what these Irish boys are like?** So, this point raises some issues around the question of perceptions of Irish identity as linked to sexuality around this time, and how John might have had latent preconceptions (beyond homophobic aversion) coming to light here. In broad terms, around the turn of the 19th/20th centuries, there was a conception, from an English perspective, of homosexuality as a foreign sin, which would become linked to conceptions of the Irish specifically as more sexually immoral. One example is how Oscar Wilde was constructed as either national or foreign by both the English and Irish papers during the height of his popularity and then during his trial, continually linking queerness to foreignness: English papers called Wilde Irish during the trial though they were quite happy to claim him as British prior to that (well, some of them). On the other hand, Irish papers had a tendency to discuss the corrupting influence of his Anglo side during the trial, essentially disavowing him as Irish. 
> 
> The other aspect has to do with conceptions of Ireland as maintaining its pre-Christian/Celtic roots even after the rise of the Catholic church there. There was a lingering thought, that goes well back to 11th or 12th centuries when the Church was formalising a lot of its doctrines, of the Irish as particularly wild, licentious, and sexually immoral, in every and all ways. Even Irish Catholicism maintained an element of that connotation well into the 19th/20th centuries, especially from a British/Church of England perspective. An Anglican might see all Catholics as somehow degenerate, but the Irish especially were suspicious, due to their very, very long history of being relative outliers to the Church. All the carrying-on the Irish and Anglo-Irish seemed to do, from drinking to emotion to more lax social rules (comparative to English upper-class eyes, at least) were also construed as evidence of unsettling sexuality. 
> 
> Fascinatingly, this conception of pre-Christian Ireland was also resurrected by Irish gay rights movements in the 1970s as evidence of sexual liberty as natural and inherent to Irishness. In that case, the Catholic church was then re-framed as regressive and distinctly foreign. 
> 
> The thing is, of course, that this is hierarchical. So, broadly, any English person of at least a middle-class background, which John is sort of on the edge of, would see themselves at least a bit more ‘civilised’ than any Irish, including the Anglo-Irish ascendancy. The Anglo-Irish, Sherlock’s mother’s class, would classify themselves largely like the English do, with the hierarchy of the peerage, but tend to insist upon their Irish identity. But that Irish identity would be seen as very different, and more civilized, than that of the IRISH Irish, lower/working classes and anyone who maintained ties to pre-Anglo history (speaking Irish, playing the revived Gaelic games, really any traditions). Mummy’s kind of an outlier, as a Catholic; but even she is likely the product of a convert a generation or so back, rather than from a Catholic family going back to St. Patrick, because Catholic families in the 19th century and earlier weren’t allowed to be part of the peerage.


	13. A Good Irish Cheddar

His hair had dripped down the back of his undone collar all the way back to the house. Damp footsteps left on the stone steps, on the hall carpet, and Mummy’s eyebrows arched and speaking, loudly, when his gaze flicker-drags over hers through the door of the parlour. He looks away, sharply, and flees for the uncertain refuge of his bedchamber. The impression in his mattress, the rumple of his sheets, the lump of his pillow all belong to him only, any latent traces of John’s body long since washed out and tumbled over with weeks of Sherlock’s uncertain sleep. Sherlock paces; if he looks at the floor he needn’t look at the bed.

He feels — foolish, yes; he thinks on it; foolish, caught out. A child, to hope in such ways, to act in such ways. John hadn’t — well. John had desired him; his prick, hard against Sherlock’s, crude and frank and human, was enough to prove that. But to act without a fair consideration of all the facts: Sherlock is only glad there were no witnesses, none to see his flailing uncertainty. For John, he says quite firmly to himself, John does care about morals, about a public face. Sharp with a gun and a fist alike, John cares about being a man. _It’s not quite manly, is it?_ Victor had said, that first time, with Sherlock’s hips tucked snug to his arse. _It’s not really — done._

To not consider — to not — to think John’s hands on Sherlock’s shoulder, his breath at Sherlock’s ear, his willing arm in Sherlock’s grip meant anything other than a desire for excitement, a bull-headed soldier’s instinct toward his fellow trench-man. Well. It was an unfortunate lack of foresight, on Sherlock’s part. What would Mycroft think?

His brother, with his concerns for _the family name,_ for _what is done,_ for _good behaviour,_ should be enough to make Sherlock ill, in the context; instead it makes him laugh. It’s not as though Mycroft will be passing on the family name willingly himself, after all. 

He needn’t ever know; no one need know. It’s not as though Sherlock requires John’s presence; it’s not quite proper, anyway. And John won’t say, won’t breathe a word. Despite the regular scandals in the newspapers, that is far more often how these things go: the wronged party, after all, would not want any suspicion laid upon his own behaviour. 

Behaviour. What is done. Sherlock kicks out, blindly; his foot connects with the corner of the wardrobe with a harsh crack. He bites his lip, the edge of his teeth sharp against the soft flesh obliterating the sparking nerves of his toes. His fingers tangle in his hair; fist, tug; his breath comes in gasps. If he had one more grenade, he would be outside ready to blow open the —

The grenades. Of course; why stay here, in the infernal hotbox of Norbury, when somewhere in Dublin is a man whose hand created those uncertain new bombs? Why stay in Cork at all? With haste, Sherlock strips off his damp shirt, his cream flannels, leaving them in an untidy pile in the middle of the carpet. The water in his washbasin has long since gone tepid in the murky summer air, but he soaks a flannel and scrubs, unceremoniously, under his arms, at his groin, between his silty toes. 

Leaning to pick up a towel, Sherlock blinks against the dust motes disturbed by his vigorous movement. They flicker and float in the weak sunlight, fading as the sun passes over the peak the house. Sherlock blinks again, straightens, and turns to fumble for his watch — a worn old thing, but still true. Half three; he’ll just have time to catch the train in Macroom.

++

Settled into an empty first class cabin, his valise placed prominently on the seat beside him, nearest the door, Sherlock presses his fingertips to his mouth as he works through the facts to hand. The mastermind behind the grenades is a single man, in Dublin — a madman, according to Padraig. Not much to go on. Access to the necessary chemicals, connections to a forge to make the new casings, access to a space for experimentation. With the IRA, that could mean anything; the most meagre garret could house a veritable munitions factory. If it were him — but it isn’t; won’t ever be. He’s not the type to allow his skills to be assimilated into some futile ideological struggle.

He needs a lead, a hint, a suggestion; anything to reveal the first steps of a path. Drumming his fingertips together, Sherlock squeezes his eyes shut, removes himself into the dark, muted vestibule of his mind. Once the fading sunlight, fractured by the trees and telegraph poles flashing by the windows, and the chugging clanks of the train’s wheels have slipped away, he bursts open the door which leads to the corridors of his mind.

A remnant of his childhood, built and expanded in each growing year into something nearly as entangled and ramshackle as Norbury, the meandering rooms which house his many thoughts allow him to step through the myriad pieces of information encountered daily — those deemed important, at any rate. Mycroft had taught him the basics; his preening, precise instructions echo as Sherlock steps down the hallway. _Order and Reason. Everything in its place._ He shakes his head, clearing it of Mycroft’s voice. 

Dublin, Dublin: he works his way down the corridor, flinging open the door to his dormitory at Belvedere, then slamming it shut; the rich green door of the bookshop on the Quays; the massive stone archway of the Castle; the entrance to the chapel at Belvedere. None are right, and there are so many doors in the Dublin of his memory, interspersed along the corridor. He squints his eyes tighter; his hand slips and opens the door to the drawing room at Norbury, where a figure is seated, back to him. The figure turns; he grins slowly and opens his eyes.

++

Papers litter most surfaces of the parlour on Belgrave Square. On the piano, pamphlets for the Irish Women’s Workers’ Union; on the occasional table, a thick stack of postcards urging the women’s vote; strewn over the ottoman in front of the cold fireplace, broadsides for a lecture by standing Sinn Fein candidates. Sherlock flips through a dishevelled stack of papers on the desk by the window, covered in a neat, feminine hand. Poetry, mostly, singing for the glories of a free Republic. The minutes of a Cumman na mBan meeting. Little that surprises him.

He’d given his name to a sceptical-looking maid at the door, who looked down her nose to see the house disturbed so late, but let him in to wait in the parlour grudgingly. Behind him the door shudders open with a creak of the hinges. He doesn’t turn; flips another page over, then another, until he hears a small, amused cough. He glances over his shoulder, opening his mouth to say — 

“You’re not Eva.”

“No,” the woman says, wry, tight smile in place. “Charlotte,” she adds, striding forward and thrusting her hand out. Sherlock doesn’t shake it; she shrugs and lets it fall to her side. “Eva’s companion.” She looks him intently in the eye, chin thrust up to meet his gaze, and so no doubt catches the uncertain stutter of his lips as he realises what she has said. 

Eva’s _companion._ He remembers: a conversation about a car; a chauffeur; his own flaming cheeks. He hadn’t thought to consider that — that her friend would be here, still, after these years. If she is the same woman. 

Charlotte steps around him to neaten the desk. Not self-consciously, as though try to hide the words, but with neat efficiency. Her touch is proprietary, familiar; her brown skirt and cream shirtwaist functional and plain; her hair parted sharply down the centre, too severe for her straight-edged nose, and tucked into a roll at her neck. Gesturing toward the sofa, she says, “Have a seat — if you can find one,” and lifts a stack of books off one of the armchairs. “Eva should be back shortly.” Sherlock’s annoyance must flit over his face, for she snorts and says, “You can’t expect her to be home at all hours for an unannounced guest. One she hasn’t seen in many years, I’d wager.” He feels a flush warm his cheeks at her sidelong glance and bits the inside of his cheek to temper it.

Resigned to waiting, Sherlock pushes aside a box of envelopes to perch on one end of the sofa. Even seated, Charlotte doesn’t lower her gaze; her eyes roam, with frank curiosity, over him. 

She takes a short breath, and in the moment before she begins to speak, Sherlock says, instead, all in a rush: “You worked as a journalist during the war, but gave it up shortly after Armistice, possibly because they wouldn’t allow a woman to cover political issues anymore, more probably because you became more active in your various causes. You’re older than Eva but come from more modest circumstances; this is her family house you’ve made your home in, after all. Your poetry is middling but popular with your political set, and you often wish you could attend more to it than to all of this.” He gestures to the muckraking papers spread throughout the room. In the pause, Charlotte opens her mouth to respond, but Sherlock continues after a mere breath. 

“Given Eva’s previous associations, you both no doubt engage in some activities more, shall we say, active in the current troubles than poster-making and strikes. You wish, at times, that a compromise would be found, for the longer the fighting goes on the more you find that you prefer peace to an absolute Irish victory. Eva feels much the same, but you both retain too much guilt to abandon your comrades — and family — to their fate.” Closing his mouth, Sherlock rocks back into the sofa. Charlotte has gone a bit pale.

Narrowing her eyes, Charlotte wrings her hands together. Sherlock pushes his tongue against the back of his teeth, anticipatory; she won’t tell him to leave, for she cares for Eva too much. A much likelier scenario would see her politely stand to see about tea or some other excuse. 

She opens her mouth; Sherlock prepares to say _just sugar for me,_ when she says, “I can see why she likes you.” 

“I — what?”

“You’re as clever as they come, aren’t you? Eva likes clever.” She says it with a strange, pleased sort of smile. 

“Are you clever, then?” Sherlock allows his voice to slip toward taunting, but Charlotte’s smile just breaks more widely.

“Oh, not half so much as Eva. But we get on, I find.” Just at the end of her words, the door, which had drifted closed during their conversation, creaks open once more.

“Are you saying terrible things about me?” Eva says as she steps into the room. He remembers her eyes; they’re just the same. Beyond that, though, she is changed in the creases at the corners of her eyes, her worn hands from which she plucks a pair of nubuck gloves, the sharpness of her chin, having lost the roundness of early youth. Her gait, in the few steps across the parlour floor, maintains its quick, determined roll, and the quirk of her lips feels just like any grin she gave him in the loft of the barn, those years ago. Her hair, now, is cropped short and shiny, shoved behind her ears, and her clothes much like Charlotte’s, plain and functional. She carries a small bag, which she tosses with casual care onto a side table and holds out her ungloved hands to Sherlock.

He rises as much as is tugged up; Eva embraces him, tight, her chin digging sharply into his collarbone. “You could have just visited, you know. You didn’t have to blow up bloody Oxford to come back.” 

Sherlock shrugs up one shoulder. “It seemed the thing to do.” He keeps his lips straight and serious for one long moment before Eva giggles, pealing and joyful, and his smile cracks. 

“Sit, you mad man. Charlotte, have we tea?” The door creaks open as she says it, pushed by a red-cheeked maid carrying a tray. Charlotte pours; Eva clasps her hands on her knees, for the moment sixteen again and ready for an adventure. “So,” Eva says, the question implied. 

“He thinks we have IRA connections,” Charlotte says before Sherlock can begin the tale he’s made up — that he’s consulting on a local case which requires further knowledge of explosives — which is so close to the truth that it nearly is, really. Eva’s brow furrows.

“You do,” Sherlock says, feeling defencive. “I’m simply interested in information, nothing dangerous.”

Eva snorts. “Information is dangerous; or haven’t you learnt that yet?” Sherlock sniffs, avoids Eva’s gaze. “What sort of information?” she asks, finally, as he knew she would.

“There’s a man building a new sort of grenade. I’d just like to meet him. A name — that’s all I need.”

“Why? Why do you want to know?”

“I —”

“It’s not something to play at, Sherlock; it’s not a game.” Eva’s lips have gone thin, pale; she leans forward intently, elbows sharp on her knees. Sherlock swallows, looks down.

“I do know that,” he says, not unkindly. “I do — and he should, too. I’m clever, but it doesn’t take genius to put the pieces together and work out this new scheme. If the RIC decides to go against long-standing tradition and hire policemen actually capable of doing proper police work —”

“You’re not on our side,” Charlotte interrupts, definitively, and Sherlock looks up, fingers laced together under his chin.

“Which side is that? You’re pacifists, don’t I have that right? Is yours the side that blows people up?”

“Sherlock —”

“I’m not the one pretending to —” Stopping himself, Sherlock takes a breath. 

His caution is not enough, though; Eva leans forward, half out of her seat. “Pretending? When people I love — people I’ve worked next to day in and out — are killed? When I’m searched in the street for just going out; when —” She stops, swallowing, and looks at Charlotte, whose hands are white on her knees, but who hasn’t stopped her. “You’re Irish too; you should care.”

_Half-Irish:_ he doesn’t correct her.“People are being killed in Macroom, too,” he says. 

“But that’s not why you’re here.” Distant and cold, her voice picks at his edges, demanding he lift away some of his mask, let out a bit of the truth. He doesn’t think about debts owed; about old friends, but he does take a breath and stops lying.

“I just want to speak to him. As a — as a scientist.” Eva eyes him, intently. He thinks of a hammer in her hands, her grin around a mouthful of nails, the way she’d bloodied her knuckles at reading the telegram, and how he’d gripped her elbow when trying to talk their way through the barricade outside of Maryborough. She’s as stubborn as him, easily, when she has a mind to be.

Finally, she sighs. “I don’t know him,” she starts, holding up a finger when Sherlock tries to interrupt. “Or his name. Rumour only. I’d say try UCD, chemistry department.” Beside her, Charlotte pinches her lips together and stares at the fireplace; Sherlock ignores her and nods tightly at Eva.

“Right,” he says, standing. They both rise with him, Charlotte pale and tight-jawed, and Eva kisses him on both cheeks and grips his elbows tight. 

“For god’s sake, be careful,” she says, a half-worried smile playing at the corners of her lips. “I worry about you, you know.”

Sherlock starts to say something flippant, but nods instead. 

“Where are you staying? Will you call tomorrow, tell us how you got on?” Sherlock blinks; he hadn’t thought to arrange a hotel. He doesn’t need sleep, not tonight, but night has fallen. He opens his mouth to respond, but Eva gives an unsurprised little sigh at his long pause. “You’ll stay here, then,” she says. Beside her, Charlotte barely stifles a cough.

“Thank you —” Sherlock offers, with uncertainty; Eva just laughs.

“Come along, then, I’ll show you up.”

++

The guest room is small but comfortable; Sherlock makes his thanks, rejecting Eva’s offer for a cold supper, and settles his valise in the chair by the window. Outside, darkness has fallen, and the lamps have been turned on. Their iron scroll work, with its curlicues and fanciful shamrocks, seem floating ghosts from his second-storey window. 

Footsteps sound in the hallway; Eva calls a soft goodnight through his door, which he ignores. Charlotte says nothing, but by the syncopated cadence of their footfall, walks just next to Eva. A door opens — footsteps — closes. Even though he’d suspected, the thought unexpectedly makes him flush. A shared chamber; a shared bed. Eva’s eyes, bright and wilful, the pub dark and smelling of beer and vinegar, as she leans close. _Have you a — a sweetheart?_

He paces. Door — wardrobe — window. The low voices across the hall fall to soft murmurs, then to silence. Easing the door open, Sherlock steals down the stairs, lifting the latchkey from its hook near the front door before stepping outside and closing the door behind him with a quiet click. 

His map of Dublin no doubt wants revising; on his way from the train station, he’d seen routes and barricades new since the rebuilding after the Rising. Eva’s little corner in Rathmines, though, has changed little, and he makes his way broadly north encountering only a few carriages and the odd person hurrying along the pavement. Upon nearing the canal, he pushes through a crowd of soldiers making their way back to barracks, giving the air of an impatient student, ready for the pubs after a long day. 

As expected, Earlsfort Terrace is largely quiet and dark. Most of the buildings, dedicated to the University, are shut up for the evening, with only a few lit windows indicating those more assiduous — or desperate — scholars. Skirting around to the back, Sherlock jimmies open a service door. Inside, the corridors of the building, which houses the University’s schools of science and engineering, are wide, with tall, arched doorways leading to the various lecture theatres and laboratories. His footsteps echo — he cannot help that — but the lights are low, the hallways quiet. 

This is not his first visit to Earlsfort at unconventional hours; he’d tried to break into the laboratories, once, when he was thirteen. The experience has served him well, for he remembers precisely the location of the administrative offices, where he had been hauled to wait for a Belvedere tutor to retrieve him. Though the school had likely increased the nightwatchmen on patrol, he had also learnt a little in the intervening years about how to remain undetected. 

He’s just turned the corner to start ascending the stairs when a blast, then a crash, sounds. He jumps back over the bottom three steps, grabbing the banister to swing his body around the corner, and runs down the hallway.

It’s difficult to discern, at first, from where the sound came, until smoke begins to leak under one of the laboratory doors. He flings it open and has to turn his head, cough, when assailed by more smoke. Stepping well back to allow it to clear, he blinks rapidly as his eyes begin to burn.

“It’s fine — it’s nothing!” A voice calls from within. Dublin born, working class. Hoarse — from the smoke — and muffled. 

“Is that — tear gas?” He’d never been exposed before, but by his rapidly welling eyes, the inflamed tissues of his nasal passages, and the tightness in his throat, it is not difficult to pinpoint.

“Umm —” The voice comes nearer as a figure steps out of the thinning smoke. He’s slighter than Sherlock and a head shorter and currently wears a gas mask and goggles, giving him the otherworldly countenance of a plague doctor. “Sorry,” he says, muffled. “Did you —” Shoving his goggles up and blinking rapidly, he screws up his eyes, focusing on Sherlock. 

“Oh. You’re not Perry.”

“No.” The man’s eyes dart rapidly back and forth, surveying the near-empty hallway. No one else has come running, so the building is either empty or, more likely, the nightwatchmen — Perry? — are used to turning a blind eye. 

Reaching up to tug off his gas mask, the man fumbles the strap a bit, sending it clattering to the ground. He and Sherlock bend at the same time to pick it up, but Sherlock gets it first, glancing over it rapidly as he stands and holds it out. Roughly made — homemade? — experimental. 

“Thanks.” Pulling his goggles off properly, the man takes the mask with his other hand which, Sherlock realizes once it’s held up in the low light of the corridor, is missing two fingers, the skin gnarled and red. The sight sparks something, but he cannot grasp the thought before the man is clearing his throat and saying, “If you wouldn’t — mention this, I’d be thankful.”

“Not exactly cricket,” Sherlock says, off-hand, mind still chasing after the escaping thought. The man rocks back on his heels with an embarrassed shrug and — oh! The wood clearing; Padraig tired of him; _You should take care not to blow a hand off and all._ He’s found his man.

“I won’t let slip a word,” Sherlock says, unfurling a conspiratory grin, “if you let me take a look.” He lets a little of the country slip-sidle into the cadence of his voice; if the other man notices the slide of Sherlock’s accent he doesn’t let on. 

“I really don’t —” The man glances back into the lab, where only a slight haze of smoke remains. Sherlock’s eyes still burn but he forces them open, bright and engaging. He smiles, lips stretching over teeth, then thinks better of it, John’s voice in his mind — _bloody unsettling when you do that_ — and instead settles for twitching just the corners of his lips up.

“Just a peek,” Sherlock says, angling his body toward the door, keeping his shoulders loose and friendly but making no effort to hide his height. The man’s cowed blinking suggests that this combination of friendly and intimidating has begun to work. 

“Well —”

“Call it scholarly curiosity. I studied chemistry, too,” Sherlock says, neglecting to mention that he’d not finished his degree. 

“I suppose there’s no harm in it,” the man says cautiously, taking a step back. Sherlock steps into the laboratory. Through an open window at the back flutters the evening breeze. The lights are low, but for one row of overhead lamps at the far end of the room, hanging above a bench covered in glassware. A faint trail of smoke still curls from one flask, but the set-up spread across the surface is far larger than needed just to create tear gas. Sherlock grins broadly, but tamps it down as he glances back behind him, to where the man stands, hands laced together in front of him, twiddling nervously.

“Very impressive,” Sherlock says brightly, gesturing to the interwoven vessels, ready for distillation and purification, for heating and mixing, for the most delicate of interventions into the combination of chemicals. He leans in, sniffing delicately. The reek of tear gas dominates, but under it something more subtle, sharp and acrid, lingers. He’d prefer to return on his own, poke around properly, but he has no doubt that his man will relocate after tonight, given the nervous twitch of his thumbs.

Behind him, the man clears his throat. Sherlock straightens, sliding his bright and friendly mask back into place. “I do apologise,” he says, stepping close and holding out his hand. “My manners just fly away when I see something interesting. Sherlock Holmes.”

“James O’Donovan. Jim.” the man says, holding out his hand limply. Sherlock pumps it once and releases. 

“So, Jim. Tear gas — testing the gas masks, no doubt,” Sherlock says, with a hint of a wink. _All in this together._ “Anything more — interesting on the docket?”

Jim inhales; his eyes flick to the cupboard behind Sherlock before he shakes his head blandly. “Just as you said. Never can be too careful these days.”

“No,” Sherlock says. “No, of course. Though, care takes many forms. Did I mention I studied in Cork under Professor Ryan? He taught me a bit about caution.” Sherlock’s never met Professor Ryan, but his name was on half the papers about explosives at the Cork University library, and he’d completed his graduate studies at UCD, so, if the rumours Eva referred to are true, he may still have useful connections here. 

“Did you,” Jim says, curiosity starting to curl around the flat, nervous tones of his voice.

Sherlock inclines his head. “He was most stimulating. But then, I’ve an interest in all things incendiary. Or have now, times being what they are.”

Jim blinks and runs his tongue over the top of his teeth before snorting. “Old Ryan’s getting lazy. That’s the worst code-work I’ve ever heard.”

Sherlock shrugs, sheepishly. “I wouldn’t suggest that his memory’s not what it used to be. Not in earshot, anyway.” Jim laughs, and Sherlock feels a shudder of pleasure and relief course through him. 

“Did he send you to check up on the cheddar, then?” Jim burst out of his nervous fiddling, stepping around Sherlock to yank open a cupboard and pull out a wooden box. “We’re still working on the casings, of course, but they’re coming along.” He eases the top off, lifting out a series of glass bottles and settling them along the worktop.

“Cheddar?” Each bottle contains a different compound — oils, white powders, pale yellow crystals, wax — all unlabelled. 

Jim pauses, grinning broadly at Sherlock. “He didn’t tell you?” He lifts a small circular tin, opening up the lid. Inside is packed a golden yellow wax. “Irish cheddar. Named it myself — based on cheddite, of course, but I can make it right here in the lab, no need to go about ambushing quarries and all sorts.”

_Cheddite._ Sherlock parses through the information he’d read. Highly explosive, but known for its stability. Usually suspended in castor oil or, indeed, paraffin wax. A modification of that — this Irish Cheddar — would be very useful for the IRA indeed.

“We were using the old War Flour, of course, but Cheddar’s easier to manufacture. If we can get the casings down right — but we’re nearly there.”

“How fascinating,” Sherlock says. It is, though it’s only confirmed his suspicions that the IRA were creating their own explosives in their entirety, rather than relying on stolen explosive material in new casings. He steps forward, peering at some of the vessels on the table. A tightly-covered glass dish tucked into a box draws his attention. “What of this here?”

He reaches for it, but Jim snorts and says, “I’d be careful with that one. Botulism.” Sherlock glances up sharply, and Jim raises his eyebrows. “Considering all options.”

“Of course,” Sherlock says, calmly, as though he hadn’t just learnt that the IRA were considering germ warfare. That was certainly far and beyond their current activities. “And the tear gas, of course.”

“Not convinced on that one, myself.” Jim shoves his hands in his pockets, shrugs. “Lacks a certain — permanence.” 

“Not like grenades.”

“Mmm. D’you want a go?” 

“Now you’re talking sense.” Jim grins and nods to the space next to him; they stand, arms nearly bumping, as Jim demonstrates the proper proportions and methods, walking Sherlock through the slow, steady-handed process of creating destruction.

++

Sherlock comes down to breakfast whistling in the morning; Eva glances up from her newspaper and raises her eyebrows. “You look like the cat who got the cream.”

Smiling, Sherlock drops into a seat across from Charlotte, reaching across the table for a scone and biting into it with relish. Solutions do always make him so hungry. Eva sighs and pushes the teapot closer to him. He looks at his empty teacup pointedly, and she snorts. “Not bloody likely,” she says, so Sherlock shrugs and, swallowing the last of his scone, pours himself a cup.

Scooping some sugar into it, he snatches another scone. “There are eggs and tomatoes on the sideboard,” Charlotte says, with unblinking calm. He holds the scone between his teeth, standing to dish up a plate.

“You found him, then, did you?” Eva asks once Sherlock is seated again. He smiles against the tines of his fork; he knew she wouldn’t be able to wait long without knowing. “I don’t want to know his name, or anything,” she says quickly, before he can respond. He raises an eyebrow; like he’d be so foolish.

“We had the most stimulating conversation,” he says. Across the table, Charlotte grimaces. 

“While he built bombs?” she asks coolly. 

“Tear-gas, at first.” With a crack of his knife, Sherlock tops his egg. He doesn’t mention the small tin of Cheddar packed away in his valise. Eva raises both eyebrows at him. “It was perfectly safe,” Sherlock says peevishly. His eyes had recovered after an hour had passed, after all, and at the end he’d helped Jim clean up and tuck away his equipment, leaving the laboratory bland and safe for the morning’s classes. Eva snorts, but says nothing.

Finishing breakfast, Sherlock checks his watch and drinks down the rest of his tea. “You’re not going already,” Eva says, catching his movement.

“I’ve finished here,” he says. “And I’ve leads to follow up in Cork.”

Eva frowns, looking ready to argue, but Charlotte reaches over the table to grasp her hand. “You’re always welcome here,” Charlotte says firmly, though she still looks at Eva; something passes between them which makes Sherlock’s stomach twist, achingly, then Eva squeezes Charlotte’s hand and stands.

“Do visit again. A proper visit this time,” she says, grasping Sherlock’s shoulders. Though the corners of her eyes haven’t lost their constant worry, her bright smile is true. 

“Yes,” he says uncertainly; with a huff, Eva throws her arms around his shoulders, pulling him close. She has to stand on her toes to touch her lips to his cheek. “My train —” he says to her hair. Eva pulls back and he lifts his valise.

“I’ll show you out,” Charlotte says, sharply, and Eva nods, giving him one last hug, briefer this time. She feels slight in his arms, but steady, untrembling. 

At the door, Charlotte pauses, one hand gripping the knob. “Don’t tell anyone that she told you,” she says, looking at the side table rather than Sherlock. Were it not for the brass knob, her hand would be a fist. “You could get her killed, you know.” She glances up at him, finally; her grey eyes are draw, furrowed at the corners, and fierce. “I’ve spent many years trying to keep that from happening. I know enough to know you’re not careful, but if you — god, if you care for her at all, you’ll keep your damned mouth shut.”

Sherlock inhales; exhales. “I’m very good at keeping secrets,” he says. She closes her eyes for one long moment, then opens the door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[Terror in Ireland (1920)](http://youtu.be/pc2hhApSHv0)**
> 
> **1\. I’d say try UCD.** Founded largely as a Catholic alternative to the Church of England Trinity College, which maintained restrictions on the admission of Catholics to study and teach until the late nineteenth century, University College Dublin was in 1920 largely located at Earlsfort Terrace, near St. Stephen’s Green. Eva’s statement is hardly a guess: the academic ties of some of the leaders of the Rising and the War of Independence ran deep, and support for both was widespread amongst both faculty and students. 
> 
> **2\. Their iron scroll work.** Just because I spent way too much time trying to see if there were shamrock lamp posts in the part of Rathmines where I’ve placed Eva’s house, have some [visuals](http://www.askaboutireland.ie/reading-room/history-heritage/architecture/historic-architectural-fe/streetlights/examples-from-dublin-6/).
> 
> **3\. James (Jim or Seamus) O’Donovan.** Oh, Jim! Though I’m playing with fiction and BBC canon here, James O’Donovan was a real historical person who served as the Director of Chemicals for the IRA from 1918-1924 and 1938-1943. He did in fact get his beginnings while experimenting at UCD, starting with experimenting with existing chemicals and creating new ones, and moving onto planning, extensively, the IRA’s bombing campaigns. Professor Hugh Ryan (of UCD, not University College Cork, as I’ve portrayed here) was one of his early mentors.
> 
> Wonderfully enough, though it works out nicely with our own Jim, he did, in fact, do almost everything portrayed here:
> 
> -Created and tested tear gas in the UCD laboratories, including one incident when the liquid gas blew up in his face, leaving him temporarily blinded and with blisters all over his face. In the midst of this incident he encountered a laboratory superintendent named Perry, who did not report him.
> 
> -Created two forms of explosives used in IRA grenade bombs, War Flour and Irish Cheddar, and experimented with grenade casings which would shatter apart in precise and predictable ways.
> 
> -Experimented with botulism as a form of germ warfare against the British, to be used to infect their horses, though this plan was never put into action.
> 
> -While testing a grenade, he injured his hands, resulting in two fingers being amputated (though this happened in 1922, after the events of this chapter).
> 
> In WWII, O’Donovan planned the IRA S-Plan bombing campaign against England, collaborating with German intelligence — and even hosting a Nazi officer in his home. For more fascinating research on O’Donovan, I would highly suggest [Codename Paddy O’Brien](http://www.rte.ie/radio1/doconone/radio--documentary-codename-paddy-obrien.html), an RTE documentary on O’Donovan and his son, and _The Devil’s Deal: The IRA, Nazi Germany and the Double Life of Jim O’Donovan_ , David O’Donoghue’s 2010 biography of O’Donovan.


	14. A Dance and a Brawl

John wakes sick to his gut, like he’d gulped down half the pond in his hurried escape. He vomits in the WC and exits to Hughes’ raised brows. “Don’t,” John warns; Hughes flicks his lashes, innocence embodied, and holds up his hands. John pushes past him.

He dresses; his belt tight at his waist, his gun snug at his hip: both soothe. At breakfast, he finds his appetite largely normal, and as he reaches for a plate of sausages, Hughes tugs it away, tossing him instead a hunk of brown bread.

“Can’t upset your delicate tummy,” he says mildly. John throws the bread back; Hughes dodges in time and it smacks Danielson at the back of his neck. The Sergeant turns and stands over their table, and John looks up at him, brows inquisitive and expression placid. Across from him, Hughes coughs into his plate.

“I have a task for you tonight, Watson.”

“Sir?”

Danielson kisses his teeth; Hughes looks delighted. “There’s a dance up at the castle tonight and I’m expected to send up a few representatives. Half of C Company got called down to Cork today; they must be scrambling for numbers. I hope you can do a decent waltz.” John blinks. He’d expected some awful bit of guard duty, but a dance might in fact be worse.

“I don’t know why you’re laughing, Hughes,” Danielson says. Hughes’ shoulders stop shaking. “You’ll be attending as well. On shining behaviour.” 

“Sir.” Hughes nods tightly, raising his eyebrow just a tick. John keeps his face impassive, and Danielson, with narrowed eyes, steps away.

“I’d go to the dance,” Finnegan says peevishly, under the revived sounds of breakfast. “I don’t see why he wouldn’t choose me.”

“Because you want to,” Hughes says, biting into a sausage. “The District Inspector will be there; Danielson’ll want to put up a good show. Serious, sober detectives; the pride of Macroom.” At John’s snort, Hughes waves his fork, scolding. The bite of sausage at the tip wavers unsteadily. “That means you’d best be sociable, even if your paramour attends. Whoever she is.”

Clearing his throat and saying nothing, John jags his shoulders, a jerky shrug. “The model of sociability,” he agrees blandly.

++

The ballroom is hot and sticky with breath, bodies, and excitement when John arrives; he skirts the edge of the dancing to find the beverage table. A crystal punch bowl, sweating, full of a sickly red punch that packs a burn – contribution of one of the men, no doubt, who take unholy pleasure in the highly alcoholic and highly illegal poitín procured from laughing, red-faced local men. John would have half-suspected them of selling the English bad stock if he didn’t know it was lethal to begin with.

Across the room, Moran stands in conversation with Lieutenant Nathan. John finds himself watching Moran more, now, since the business with Silver Blaze. Sherlock’s tip-off had indeed caught up Fingal O’Brien and Geehan, the groom, though the trainer, John Striker, maintained he knew nothing of the scheme. Behind the man’s casual words, though, Sherlock had obtained no proof against Moran. 

Moran must feel John’s eyes on him; he glances up, tipping his glass in John’s direction. John nods back, curtly, and lets Moran break eye contact first. Beyond that steady confidence and unnerving grin, Moran undoubtedly has more secrets than benefiting from a fixed race. John’s seen his aim and the casual, easy way he handles his Luger 08, a blunt-gripped remnant of the Great War; he’s not certain how many more of those secrets he’d like to find out. 

Milling casually through the room, John keeps a weather eye on Moran as he makes his greetings. He stops to speak to a few of the other officers he knows, with bows to wives, sweethearts, and the few young eligible women allowed to attend. Many parents fear their daughters’ safety on the road and in the arms of subalterns equally – and with good reason, John thinks. Many of the young Auxies, boys of good breeding but green experience, came to Ireland with a name, a commission, and no money or intention to remain. Seeing the District Inspector, John approaches to make a sharp salute and a brief, but glowing, reference to Sergeant Danielson. 

Nathan breaks away from Moran, moving to the refreshments, empty glass held ruefully at his side, and Moran begins striding across the room toward John, only to be interrupted by Hughes. It wouldn’t take John’s curious gaze to catch the expression of annoyance that crosses Moran’s face, but he gestures to Hughes to lead the way. They step outside of the room; John edges back toward the door, but they’ve stepped across the corridor and he can only make out a few words above the music and chatter. Silver filters through, and race, and John grins to himself. It appears he’s not the only one watching Moran.

Moving back into the room, John finds a post towards the back, eyes perusing the room. Not — certainly not — for any specific person. He recognises most of the officers by sight, if not name, though he’s only met a handful of the women who have chosen to accompany their husbands to Ireland — the wild fens, untouched by civilisation, to hear some speak of it.

Standing awkwardly against one wall, he catches a conversation between two of the officers’ wives. It takes a few moments before he picks up the line of conversation; they seem to be discussing the guests in attendance, but in what way he only realises when hearing Sherlock’s name.

“…the Holmes boys.”

“Yes, but they rarely attend. The elder’s back in London, I believe, and the younger —” the woman breaks off, titters a laugh.

“Yes, a bit queer, is he not? To look at, though —”

“Like Byron,” the first woman finishes, and they both giggle. John feels heat creep up his neck.

“Until he says a word!” John swallows a laugh, imagining Sherlock shocking and scandalising the English wives. “You’d hardly know they two were related,” she continues. “The lord is so very —”

“Oh, yes. From what I understand, though, the younger was fair left to wander the village and countryside as a boy. More Irish than perhaps his father intended, if you understand my meaning.”

“That would rather explain it. Society here is so very —” she breaks off with a cough, and John, curious, looks about discreetly to see what might have caused the abrupt end. He sees only Molly Hooper approaching; it is immediately apparent that her presence is the offending factor when one of the English women greets her with a treacly sweetness to her voice.

“Miss Hooper, how kind of you to join us!” The three women kiss cheeks.

“Indeed,” the other woman says, “I was just saying to Mrs Edwards here that I did hope some of our local girls would be able to make the trip. The roads at night,” she tuts, shaking her head.

“Yes, well,” Molly says, giving an uncertain grin, “they’re hardly more frightening than maggots in a months-dead body. And I’ve lived through that.”

Both women stare, before one coughs and looks away. “It is a shame none of your countrymen are here to pair you,” Mrs Edwards says with exaggerated pity, clearly taking a different approach than her companion in the act of shaming. “I know how you Irish do like to dance.”

“I —” Molly clearly cannot think how to respond, and John decides he has listened to enough prattle. Across the room, the band plays a lively tune, so he swills the rest of his punch and walks over.

He nods at the two officers’ wives but doesn’t introduce himself. “Miss Hooper? I wonder if you might care to dance.”

“I — yes,” she says, quite breathless, and takes his hand. 

“I warn you,” John murmurs as he tucks one hand at the middle of her back, “I’m all left feet.” Molly laughs, tucking her chin down. Her hair brushes his cheek.

“I never quite learnt to dance,” she admits, “except a jig and reel.” She glances around as they manage an awkward three-step waltz. “I don’t expect there will be much call for that here.”

“We’re managing, aren’t we?” John says as they make a turn.

“Oh, yes,” Molly says, breathless, as John treads on her foot.

“I — oh, dear,” John says, but then Molly laughs, her small frame shaking in his hands, chin bent to her chest, and John chuckles. “Have we made our point, then?” he asks, and she nods, still giggling. The music ends just as he steps back, and John quirks an eyebrow. “Shall we take some air?”

He leads the way down the stairwell to the back courtyard, where the cool night air blows in gentle breezes through the manicured topiaries. Molly drops unceremoniously to the stone steps, her dress pooling beside her thighs, and props her elbows to her knees. John, after a slight hesitation, sits next to her. His leg twinges, but he ignores it, and if it’s held a bit stiffer than the other Molly doesn’t comment. 

The quiet between them is unsteady; John looks away, across the courtyard to the stone wall; beyond it, darkness envelopes the town. 

“Sherlock hasn’t been in the mortuary, of late,” Molly says; her fringe falls in her eyes as she tilts her head to look at him. “Have you been seeing him?”

“Not — um — not as such, recently.”

“Oh. I thought —” Molly shakes her head. “I thought you might have been up to Norbury.”

“Yes, well —” he clears his throat, doesn’t look at Molly. “We’ve been busier with patrols lately, not much time for calling.”

“Right,” she says, clearly suspecting John’s hidden something behind that answer. “It’s just that —” she bites her lip and looks at the grass.

“What?”

“Nothing, just — I thought he might, or you might — stick together. Just that he doesn’t often bring people along, like that, or talk to them the way he does with you,” she says, all in a rush.

“Oh.” John frowns and is silent for a moment. “What way is that?”

Molly looks at him; her chin is in her palm, fingertips covering her mouth. “Like he cares that you understand.”

John’s at a loss to respond, so he changes the subject. “Did you and Sherlock grow up together, then?”

“Mm, after a fashion. As a boy, he would come to Da’s mortuary to observe. I wonder sometimes that he didn’t become a surgeon, or something. Though I suppose it’s not the done thing, for his folk.”

“Mycroft’s in politics, isn’t he?”

“Yes, but that’s respectable. Compulsory, anyway, him being the Lord. Sherlock, though. Sent down, ambitions to be a — I’m not even quite sure what, but it drives his mother spare.” 

John snorts. “I’m sure.”

“You should go to him. Even without a — a murder, I’m sure he’d be interested in your company.”

“I don’t think that’s —” he tightens his jaw, swallows. “I’m not sure that will happen,” he says finally, voice very steady. Molly doesn’t respond; he can hear her soft, quick breath on the still air. 

“How’re the — the men?” she says, with the awkward awareness of one pointedly changing the subject.

“At the barracks, you mean?”

“Well, you said it’d been — busy —”

“Hmm, yes.” John fists then shakes out his hand, placing it firmly on his knee. “More ambushes, of late. And double guard duty, as we’re still holding the O’Brien boys.”

Molly’s inhale is unsteady, but when he glances at her, she gazes out into the darkness peaceably enough. “I’d imagine they’re giving you a fair go of it.” John snorts.

“When they’re not complaining about the damp or the food, they’re mocking every guard on duty. Do you know them?”

“It’s Ireland, Constable Watson. Everyone knows everyone.” She glances up at John, a quick flick of her lashes, then thins her lips and returns to looking forward. “Surely you won’t be holding them much longer.”

Shaking his head, John taps his heel against the flagstones. The sound echoes. “Sending them up to Dublin next week,” he confirms. “And good riddance; they’re riling the younger constables up something awful.”

Molly snorts. “You’re hardly an old man.”

“Well.” John looks ruefully at his hands, spread across his knees. His leg doesn’t ache, not really, but he can feel the ghostly awareness of the familiar pain. “I feel it, sometimes. Those two brothers — they’re just boys. Shouldn’t be mixed up in all this.”

“How old were you when you went to war?” John glances at Molly; her face, half-shadowed, is inscrutable. _Just a guess,_ he thinks. He’s not told anyone here about his volunteering early.

“Not as young as all that,” he says, finally. Molly’s mouth — the side illuminated through the plate-glass doors of the ballroom — tips up at the corner. 

“Still,” she says, looking back down at her feet. “It’s what boys are like, isn’t it? My brother — well. You must remember; it seems boys are always invincible at that age.”

John lets out a deep breath. Does he remember? He remembers the farmhouse, too small even with just him and his father. Remembers the itch of his hands, the twitch in his blood. Remembers the trenches. “Of course,” he says finally; his words fall too heavy between them.

Molly wants to say something else, he can tell, so he stands and says, too loudly, “Well, perhaps we should return.”

“Yes,” she says, after a beat. He escorts her in, then bows deeply, taking his leave. The room is too stifling, anyway, he thinks as he steps out into the corridor. He wishes for a cigarette.

Behind him, footsteps clatter; he turns enough to see Nathan stumbling out of the room, downing his drink and dropping the glass onto the hallstand. It shatters. John cringes. 

“Alright?” he says, less out of concern than a desire to be left alone. Nathan pulls himself upright, peers at John.

“Watson! Good man — good —” He balances himself by catching hold of a topiary bush, which teeters but doesn’t topple over. “Man’s man,” he says, laughing — giggling, really — to himself. John sighs, rubbing his hand on his thigh, and steps forward to grasp Nathan by the upper arm.

“Should get you back to barracks.” John steers him toward the door, but Nathan shrugs out of his grasp. 

“Where’s your —” he waves his hand toward the ballroom — “your lady friend. The mousy one. Wouldn’t have pegged you for it, not with —” Nathan breaks off once more, gesturing anaemically. His voice carries. John attempts once more to direct him to the exit, but he pulls away dramatically, stumbling over the topiary; it crashes to the ground, its urn shattering, though Nathan stays upright. 

A few curious heads emerge from the door. Suppressing a groan, John smiles tightly at the party-goers, saying, “He’s just had a bit of a tipple. I’ll manage him.” He must seem confident, for they return to their dancing. All but one.

Molly steps into the hallway, concern writ across her face. “Can you handle him?”

“He’s tight as a newt,” John says with a groan; Molly snorts.

“That’s nearly pure ethanol your lot poured in the punch bowl. I’m surprised he’s not blind.” John wishes to protest having had anything to do with any supplementation of the refreshments, but at that moment Nathan lurches unsteadily toward the door. Tossing a grin back at John, Molly coaxes him, saying, “That’s good, Lieutenant, just this way.”

With Molly’s lead, Nathan makes his way outside. The barracks, John remembers, are across the courtyard. He begins to direct Nathan that way, but the sharp, cool night air appears to have sharpened Nathan’s senses, and he reels on Molly. “There she is,” he says, as though continuing his earlier commentary. “You should mind your heart around this one,” he says, though it’s uncertain which he’s talking to. 

“Yes, yes,” Molly says placidly. Her hand hovers near his elbow. 

“Though you’re a strange one, aren’t you?” Nathan’s voice, quite suddenly, is cold and sharp. The muscle of Molly’s jaw twitches. “All those dead bodies. Like you enjoy it. Though,” he continues, reeling back and gesturing to the air, “I’ve heard you Irish sit with your dead for days; drink with them, even. Catholics,” he says, as if spitting something distasteful.

John jerks his head, and Molly, following his direction, steps backward, away from Nathan’s emphatic gesticulation. “Bury ‘em or burn ‘em,” Nathan says, pressing closer to Molly even as she shrinks away. “Had enough of stinking corpses in France.” John is — well, he’s broadly in agreement with that statement, but not with the beady way Nathan continues to advance on Molly. John steps in, hand on Nathan’s elbow in warning, but Nathan jerks away. “Something wrong with a person who’d spend their time with the dead, like that.” He’s nearly stabbing at Molly’s chest with his pointing finger, and Molly’s breath comes in gasps, like she’s trying not to sob or shout.

“That’s enough,” John says, under his breath, and grabs Nathan’s wrist, wrenching his arm up behind his back, kicking the soft hollow behind his knee at the same time. Molly stumbles back, almost falling, and Nathan does, crumples to his knees, arm wrenched up behind him. He goes limp, quite suddenly, slumping against John’s knees and blinking up at him.

“Oh, Constable Watson. If you’d wanted me on my knees you could have just asked. Though perhaps the young Lord Holmes is your only partner in such activities.” John inhales sharply, dropping Nathan’s wrist. Pulling himself to his feet, with the ungainly balance of a drunk, Nathan rubs at his wrist. “That it, then? Why the lord’s not here tonight? Not as obliging as you’d hoped?” He takes lazy, staggering steps toward John. “Shame,” he says, as he steps within arm’s length. John’s hand twitches. “That pretty mouth; made for sucking cock. Word is he’s buggered his way up and down Ireland and a fair bit of Oxford, too. Wonder why you didn’t make the cut.”

John’s jaw twitches; he drops his voice low to the heavy air between them. “That’s enough. Now what’s going to happen is that you’re going to go back to barracks, sleep it off, and not say another bloody word about Sherlock Holmes the rest of your life.”

“Defending his honour; how quaint.” 

“No. Just not interested in your filthy rumours.” 

“Oh, I’d say you’re very interested, Constable,” Nathan says, drawing out the sibilant s: _cons-stable._ He’s drunk, John tells himself, even as he feels his shoulder draw back and —

Nathan’s punch, first, comes as a surprise; pitiful, given his condition, but nothing John had seen of the man indicated that he’d be a fighter. Bloody mouthy, a bit of a tit, certainly, but by the sharp connection of his knuckles to John’s cheekbone this is not his first bare-fisted brawl. He’d already pulled his body back to throw a punch at Nathan, so he lets the surprised swing of his body, shocked against the impact on bone, propel him forward, driving his shoulder against Nathan’s breastbone. 

Nathan stumbles back with an exhaled groan, and John advances again, fists to his ribs, to his gut. Nathan’s body, under his fists, is hard, solid — lithe, tall — and his grunts harsh-edged. Staying low, he pushes and pushes until Nathan’s back presses the brick wall surrounding the courtyard, then lets up enough for Nathan to push back, to swing wild punches that connect only with air, to move their circling feet back onto the empty flagstones. The courtyard isn’t quite so empty though; a curl of soldiers surrounds them now, bodies pushing inward like they’re aching for it, voices bright and boisterous on their names. His more than Nathan’s.

This is hardly the first fight the courtyard’s seen, not with tensions as they are lately. They get some respite: boxing, bare-knuckled behind the barracks; card games, pockets heavy with earnings easy twice what they’d make at home; ale-soaked songs of nostalgia and Old Blighty. Some drive out nights in groups, rousting more red-cheeked lovers than rebels but generally causing terror across the countryside, fists and guns serving alike, content with spoils of a wrung-neck brace of chickens or a handcuffed rebel. 

Nathan’s blows fall on John’s shoulders as John pummels at his kidneys, arms in a frenzied clinch. Around them, a dull roar, muted like underwater. Wet — salt against John’s mouth — blood against his teeth — he pulls back, wipes his mouth, spits. Nathan stands through sheer bloody obstinacy and John’s need to keep him upright, to keep him a target, to avoid any number of manoeuvres which would take him down, out and cold as a corpse on the flagstones. 

“Had enough?” John says; he hasn’t. The rough wool of Nathan’s uniform against his cheek as they grapple, the split of his knuckles, the drive behind his fist, again, again, again: he’s never felt that, not even in France, the need for a body under his fists. His hands clench, air cool against their burning, torn skin, but his heart beats as normal. Nathan spits; John grins.

“That what you say as you’re buggering your lord up the arse?” His taunt is barely halfway finished before John’s at him again, fists harsh and fast against his gut; Nathan’s sharp inhale is gurgling, wet. He throws a heavy, wildly windmilling punch which John ducks easily, twisting to shove his shoulder against Nathan’s chest, sending the man sprawling backward and stumbling to the ground. 

He takes a step forward, ready to finish him, when a hand grapples at his elbow; John sends the movement of his turn into his fist. Behind him, the man dodges right so John’s fist just glances off his arm; John follows it up with an undercut to his side and hears the satisfying sound of his breath forced out. But then — the exhale turns to his name, the groan familiar, and he looks up to Sherlock’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[The Attraction of Donnybrook Fete (1921)](http://youtu.be/zslC8peVAqM)**
> 
> No real notes this chapter, except to say that the dance here was partially inspired by a similar scene in Bowen’s _The Last September_ , in which the following delightful exchange happens:
> 
> “Do you get kissed a lot?”  
> “Englishmen never could keep their mouths to themselves.” 
> 
> LOL


	15. Queensbury Rules

Disembarking in Macroom, Sherlock decides against telephoning for Maxwell and sets out west on foot. He thinks of the slight weight of the Cheddar, its tin rolled in a handkerchief and tucked into the inner pocket of his coat. He can feel its round edge against his chest, warm from his body. He concocts experiments while he walks, wondering how the explosive will fare under more exceptional circumstances — underwater, perhaps, or contained in something larger than a grenade. He would have liked an intact grenade casing as well, but they were held up in production, Jim had said.

Long before he reaches Norbury, Sherlock becomes aware of the sweat trickling down his spine, his greatcoat having been appropriate for an evening train ride and lurking about Dublin at night, but not as fitting for the mid-afternoon August sun. He strips it off, rolling up his shirtsleeves, and tucks it over his arm for the remainder of the walk, feeling the prickle of heat on the base of his neck and over his cheeks, the ruffle of the soft breeze through his hair, and listening to the soft hum of insects in the hedges. 

Norbury is quiet when he arrives. Sherlock shuffles through the letters and cards on the hallstand by instinct more than expectation, but just at the bottom is a heavy cream envelope addressed to the Lords Holmes. Sherlock peers at it for a moment before picking it up; anything addressed jointly to him and Mycroft must not bear happy news. He hefts it in his hand, flips it over. An invitation — heavy paper, a woman’s hand, the very faint scent of lavender. Hardly something of interest, then.

He splits it open as he ascends the stairs, dropping the envelope, and snorts as he reads it. A ball at the Castle, tonight. As the local lords, they certainly merit an invitation well in advance, but neither he nor Mycroft have made a frequent effort to cultivate social ties to the town. They hardly want him there, then; must be making up numbers. Curious, as with both an Auxiliary division and the RIC stationed in Macroom they’re hardly lacking for men. 

Curious, indeed. A last minute invitation means the drop in attendance is unexpected, which could mean — 

His breath stumbles in his throat. No, though, no; if there had been an ambush or a battle with many fatalities, the ball would be cancelled, not in desperate need of being rescued. Men called away is more likely. Called away where, and for what purpose? Perhaps attending a ball is not the most useless thing he could do tonight, after all. 

++

He, quite purposefully, doesn’t arrive until the ball is well underway. People are ever so much more obliging when drunk, especially when they don’t intend to be. Before he stopped being invited to parties at Oxford, he’d make good use of his fellow revellers’ uninhibited states to discover — and confirm — all manner of trivial human trifles, along with a few rare secrets of far more interest. He had little use for blackmail — a petty, uninspired crime — but it was useful to be owed favours. 

The guardsman requests his invitation before permitting admittance past the castle gates, though even from that vantage Sherlock can think of four other ways in. He produces it pleasantly enough, enjoying the moment when the guard’s gaze, sceptical on Sherlock’s dinner jacket and tieless collar — he’d hardly wanted to subject himself to white tie for the _castle,_ after all — shifts to deferential upon reading his title. 

Despite the care of the guard at the gate, no footman appears to open the door to the castle at Sherlock’s knock. Through the walls, he can hear the music, the hum of voices, which rise and crash as he pushes through the door. What must be the whole party crowds the entrance hall back straight through to the rear door, the one which leads to the courtyard. Shoving his way in, he hears a shout go up, a wave of excitement crashing through the assembled party-goers. Next to him, a wide-eyed and red-cheeked woman in a dress a touch too staid to be fashionable gasps. He just catches the excited gossip, the disapproval mixed with glee, as he pushes by her.

The brawl going on in the courtyard is nearly disappointing; he’d been half-expecting an actual battle. Two men in uniform grapple at each other, something more slippery and grasping than Queensbury rules, while the rest of the soldiers attending form a loose sort of ring, calling out encouragement and tossing informal bets back and forth. 

Jostled on either side by soldiers, Sherlock considers turning and leaving right then, but the men in the centre of the courtyard draw up for a moment, an arm’s breadth between them, and Sherlock sees, gleaming under the gaslights, John’s darkened-honey hair and his stubborn-set jaw. A streak of red smears his cheekbone and the edges of his teeth glint. John, fighting; John, with his fists cupped loose, held ready. 

The other man spits, says something Sherlock can’t catch over the jeering crowd, and John barrels at him, fists a flutter-quick pummel to his gut. As they turn, a strange mockery of the dancing no longer happening inside, Sherlock catches sight of the other man’s face. That fool Lieutenant, Nathan; as soon as he thinks it, Sherlock’s thoughts flash back to the man’s knowing glance, to his voice, heavy with suggestion. Like a rolling thunderclap, he sees again Nathan spit, sees him taunt John, sees John launch forward with the fervour of personal anger.

He’s moving forward before he even realises he’s lifted his feet. Nathan throws a punch; John ducks it and drives his shoulder against Nathan’s chest; in the too-short moment that their bodies separate, Sherlock leaps forward, grappling for John’s forearms. John turns swinging, and, oh, stupid, Sherlock should have realised — instinct, fighter’s momentum —

He jerks to the side so John’s fist only catches his biceps and says his name — “John —” and again — “John,” until John takes a hitching breath and pulls his hands up. Sherlock reaches again, drags him closer to the castle, away from Nathan, who has stilled but waits in taut readiness. “The fight’s done,” he says, raising his voice above the crowd. They whistle, and boo, and jostle, and John raises his hand and waves it. There’s a weariness to the gesture, and it sends shuffling grumbles up through the crowd. 

Sherlock shoves through the assembled party-goers, aware of John’s steps dogging his. As though they’d always done so.

The guardsman at the gate gives them a wary glance; Sherlock ignores him and stops at the road, where he’d left the motor. Jerking open the door — it ricochets , vibrating in his hand — he waves impatiently for John to get in.

“What? What is this?”

“It’s a motorcar, John.” Sherlock hears the smack of John’s lips, the barely-huffed exhale as he decides whether to ask.

“I mean, what are we doing?”

“Getting into the car. Or would be —” John crosses his arms. “Just —” _listen to me; trust me_ — “get in. Please.”

John breathes in, deep, then uncrosses his arms and puts one hand on the door. His eyes flicker up to Sherlock’s face, then away, before he gets in. In the car, inches from Sherlock, he keeps his back straight, shoulders pressed against an imaginary wall, and keeps his eyes on the darkness in front of the windscreen. They are well out of town before John speaks.

“What are you doing driving a motor? Isn’t petrol being rationed?”

Sherlock glances at him; he faces forward. “Well, I was hardly going to ride a bicycle in formal wear.”

“You’re not even in formal wear,” John says, incredulously, though he’s only wearing a pressed version of his usual Tans uniform. Sherlock sniffs but doesn’t answer, and John’s shoulders shrug in something that might be a laugh. He stays quiet for another moment before he says, in a near-shout, “What are we doing? What —” Composing himself, John flexes his hand on his knee. Sherlock can feel the tensing of his body through the heavy air.

“You needed to —” John clears his throat; Sherlock falls silent. “I assume,” he begins again, stiffly, “that Lieutenant Nathan provoked your — your anger —”

“I wasn’t —”

Sherlock looks to John; John catches his eye, grits his teeth together, and looks away. “I assume it was related to me.”

“Not everything’s about bloody Sherlock Holmes,” John says, but the words are more a mutter than a certainty, and at Sherlock’s silence he concedes. “Yes, fine. He said — well, it’s nothing I care to repeat.” John straightens his shoulders again; hands clasped on his thighs. Not ashamed, then. Oh — oh.

“You were defending _me._ ” On the steering wheel, Sherlock’s hands feel suddenly unsteady. He wants to look at John, to see John, but all around them is darkness.

“Of course I bloody was —”

“Why do you care?” The words fall from Sherlock’s mouth, too quickly to swallow. 

“I just — it wasn’t decent.”

“I’m not decent,” Sherlock counters; John laughs, sharply.

“No. You’re a prat; but I’ll be damned if I’ll let a cock like that say — well.”

“I — I had thought it was. Well. I had thought he had made — insinuations — regarding our association.” John shifts. Oh. Nathan had covered a lot of ground. 

“I don’t — that doesn’t —”

“Yes, fine, no need to repeat yourself. I’ve hardly taken you away to assault your virtue.”

“You haven’t told me why you took me away at all.”

Sherlock blinks, watches the wavering curl of the road in front of the motor’s headlamps. _To get your hands off him_ hardly seems a reasonable answer. “Danielson had already been summoned,” he says. It’s likely, at any rate. “I thought it might be more beneficial if you were not in the vicinity at his arrival. To allow things to — dampen.”

“Oh,” John says, “I hadn’t thought — oh, am I going to get a bollocking.” He grins as he says it, though perhaps he doesn’t notice. Sherlock watches him, gaze sidelong, despairing each time he has to wrench his eyes back to the road. In the darkness, John’s profile is blurred, soft; his blunt-tipped nose and the round jut of his chin deceptively soft. A split-open bruise will be developing across the rise of his cheekbone, though Sherlock cannot make it out in the dark. 

“Are you pleased with yourself?” Sherlock’s voice comes sharper than intended, but John only snorts.

“Fair bit, yeah. Nathan’s a git.”

“On that we agree, at least.” The road swims in front of Sherlock’s eyes, dirt and gravel and trees heavy with summer dipping over the hedgerows. He knows where they are, of course, but his path has hardly been purposeful. A grasping need to pull John away from Nathan’s pathetic hands, from the shocked expressions of the English ladies, from the bets laid on and — foolishly — against his fists. A knowledge that neither Norbury nor the barracks were a wise destination, just now. He wrenches the wheel to one side, forcing the motor to the side of the road to stop on a patch of muddy grass. 

John inhales sharply when the motor comes to a stop. He doesn’t ask what they’re doing; which is just as well, for Sherlock has no answer. Sherlock flexes his hands on the wheel, its leather smooth and damp under his palms. John doesn’t look at him. 

“You put yourself in dangerous situations,” Sherlock says to the windscreen. With the headlamps off, the hedgerows and low-dipping tree branches lurk as dark, nebulous shapes. Sherlock thinks suddenly, irrationally, of walking from Oxford to catch the train at Dochester-on-Thames after being sent down; as they are now, the hedges then had become murky, winding streams in the dark night, trails to follow, to keep him true. Now, they shift with the breeze, untidy leaves and branches giving them the illusion of cover, tucked as they are in the bend of the road. 

“What?” John’s voice breaks the silence a beat too late; a weak protestation.

“You joined the army before you were of age —” It’s a hazard, a guess, John would say, but by the way he stiffens Sherlock knows he’s correct — “You spent four years in war, and you still volunteered to see more.”

“I didn’t join the army to, to _enjoy_ the dangers of war, Holmes, I —” his breath whistles sharply, catching himself up. “Sherlock. I didn’t enjoy it —”

“You did enough.”

“I saw people die, every day. I saw my friends — There are not words for it.”

“I know. I _know,_ ” he stresses, again, at John’s sidelong glance. “But you’re good with your fists; good with your gun. You enjoy that.”

“What’s the point of all this?” John’s voice is low, weary. 

“I met the man who created the new grenades.”

“You — my god, what?”

“I met him, in Dublin. And your side is full of men who enjoy violence, but you won’t win. You won’t; London will offer home rule, eventually, with a path to independence, and what you will have done here won’t matter. It doesn’t look good, does it, a place as small, as insignificant, as Ireland rebelling in such violent ways. The crown will be worried about India, about Australia.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

“Because you’re an idiot. No, don’t look at me like that; practically everyone is. But you’ll follow your command, right up until you’re killed.”

“So I should, what, desert? I can take care of myself, you know.” 

Fists silver-quick; the canny look of a predator playing: even in a lopsided fight against a drunk, John’s held-back instincts proved his words. “I know. I’m merely suggesting a course of action that will fulfil your inclination to danger outside of Queen and country.”

“King.”

“What?”

“We do have a king right now; it’s King and country. You weren’t even alive for Victoria.”

Sherlock blinks. “You’re deflecting.”

“You’re taking your time.”

“Fine. I’m asking if you wish to continue to accompany me on my investigations. I can offer what you want —”

“Why? For what purpose? If it’s inevitable, as you say, that Parliament will give Ireland up, then it can hardly serve our side.” John licks his lips; the sound smacks, wetly, in the small space. “Unless you propose to help —”

“No,” Sherlock says, cutting John off. “I’m not helping the Irish cause, either.”

“ _You’re_ Irish,” John says.

“Not that sort.” 

John coughs, looking away. Uncomfortable. “That’s — if it were England, if this were —”

“You would fight?”

“I have fought.”

“I’m not a coward —”

“I didn’t say you were. But you’re hardly a patriot. Why, then?”

“For the truth.”

John lets out a long, low breath, then grasps the door handle and shoves it open. He stumbles on his way out, catching himself too heavily on the edge of the door; the motor rocks. He slams the door behind him and paces on the grass.

For a long moment, Sherlock sits, blinking at his hands, still on the steering wheel. Then, he wrenches his own door open and circles to where John stomps back and forth along the damp grass. His arm brushes against the hedge with each step.

Sherlock tries to think of what to say, what John needs to hear, but he’s uncertain about his motivations. The feeling of words, stuck somewhere behind his tongue, is unpleasant. He doesn’t struggle long, though, for John swings to him and says, “You’re asking me to help you investigate a bomb-maker for fun. Because you’re bored?”

“No, I —”

“That’s — it’s espionage, Sherlock, and soldiers have been shot for less.” Sherlock swallows. John half-turns away, then turns back. “That’s not what I — not what I thought you wanted, when you —”

“What else would I have wanted —” Sherlock’s last words are lost to the fisting of John’s hands in his dinner jacket, shoving them together, and the crash of John’s lips on his.

Sherlock stills; John pulls away, releasing his jacket and reeling away, wiping his mouth. “Jesus. I — fuck — I didn’t —”

_I’m not like that,_ John had said. _I won’t tell._ Sherlock steps toward him; John steps back. The space between the car and the hedge is narrow, close, and the grass between their feet damp and trampled with John’s pacing. “You —” Sherlock begins, without an end in mind.

“No,” John says, but rocks forward, on the balls of his feet. Readiness. For a fight, for —

“You could —”

“No — I — I’m not —”

Sherlock touches the car, to steady himself, and hates his body for needing to. John’s gaze falls to his hand, pale against the dark metal, and he flexes his fingers instinctively. He can hear the heaviness of John’s swallow over the low breeze, can hear the crunch of the grass under his boots as he rocks forward, rocks and steps toward Sherlock. He’s not playing with prey, now; his moves are careful, telegraphed: two steps, chin tilted up, eyes sharp and mouth determined.

He doesn’t touch Sherlock this time, except where their mouths meet, and Sherlock’s fingers curl on the metal of the car. “Is this —” John says, to the scant air between them. Sherlock realises he hasn’t moved, yet, and nods. Their noses brush; his lips are damp; John’s breath is hot across his mouth. He flexes his hands, pulls his fingers away from the car, but John moves first, grasping at Sherlock’s lapels with the urgency of death — of life — of anger — and shoving him against the motorcar. The door handle digs against Sherlock’s back as John bends him, curling their bodies together in a long, pressing line so his mouth just reaches the hollow of Sherlock’s neck, so their legs hook together uncertainly, ungainly feet grappling for space on the slick grass. 

John’s sidearm presses hard against Sherlock’s hip, his bandoleer a sinuous line between their chests, his cap knocking against Sherlock’s chin. Between them mismatched wool and the starchy white crackle of Sherlock’s shirt front; between them _I have fought;_ between them the truth. Order and disarray, though Sherlock has lost track of which he is.

Fingers encircling Sherlock’s wrist, John braces them, together, against the car. His fingers curl tight, too tight, around Sherlock’s bones; the pinch of joints together sanctifies, a cleansing pain. Their bodies arching together, an architectural curve solid and strong, John’s sharp exhales bursting over Sherlock’s skin, and the tremble of his thighs against Sherlock’s, brief and then still, seem eternal. Any fragility of reason lost in the buttressing of their bodies, the edifice built in the shared rise and fall of their chests, in their feet interknit, in John’s fingers tight around Sherlock’s wrist. They could stay like this under the crimson rise of the sun, against the sharp guncracks of the war around them, within the punishing wind of time.

Then Sherlock moves. His hand — his free hand — grasps John’s hip, pulls them together, to feel the grinding heat of John’s cock through layers of clothing, his gasping breath through air foreign to his body, his need through all the awareness of _what is done._ That grasping pull crumbles the tense structure built up between them, and John, quite suddenly, drops Sherlock’s hand to hold tight to his hips, to rut their bodies together urgently. 

Sherlock grapples at John’s belt, shoves the tails of his tunic up to get to the flies of his trousers. To pull them open, to grope inside — a hazy memory of smoky exhales and Oxford gowns and ink on his fingers — but there is little of that sly, sidelong way of Victor’s coupling in the way John ruts against him, frantic and hard. The harsh, desperate panting of John’s lungs, the curl of his fingers around Sherlock’s hips — like his hand around Sherlock’s around a grenade, like his palm steady on the butt of a gun — the working of his thumbs, severe and abrading through Sherlock’s trousers, and the grim set of his mouth, teeth sturdy together, all betray John’s mind. 

He won’t leave, though, won’t pull away once he’s thrust forward; decided, John is, in his every grimace and the set of his shoulders, determined to stay his course. Sherlock won’t allow it, even were John the type to waver. It’s not settling, like a nervous hive, that John requires; the harsh edge of his need calls not to be abated, but fed. 

So Sherlock thrusts his hand between them, his own desire a wavering presence in the back of his mind. The tightness of their hips together hinders him, somewhat, but he bucks against John so John gasps and stills long enough for Sherlock to open the space between them. He’s hard, like he had been in the pond, hot, and the air around them eddies, liquid and familiar, as Sherlock strokes him with rough, stringent movements.

Layers — wool rough on his wrist — heated skin — a tangle of hair — John’s cock, firm against his palm, against the soft skin at the inside of his wrist — John’s mouth at his neck — wet, sloppy on his collar — John’s knee knocking against his calf — his cap, falling to the ground — John’s mouth — John’s mouth — 

Need pulses insistently at his temples, at his neck under John’s mouth, at his cock hard against John’s hip. With a hurried hand shoved between them, Sherlock rubs himself through his trousers, each hand mimicking the other, as John breathes against his neck, as he thrusts against Sherlock’s hips. He says nothing, the panting of his breath loud in Sherlock’s ears against the country still of the night. Sherlock’s veins throb under each damp burst. 

John climaxes against him still silent but for the hoarse groan of his throat and the rustle of their clothing together. The spill over Sherlock’s palm, onto his thigh, hot and sticky, makes Sherlock rub himself harder, more desperately, until his hips jerk with the helpless, instinctive pulsing of his own orgasm, the heavy spread of heat through his groin, his gut. 

He slumps against the car, John’s body limp with his. John’s mouth — wet — his breath — hot — his chest — heaving. Sherlock can feel the clicking of John’s thoughts as they slot together, cogs turning and falling into place, as his neck stiffens and pulls back, his shoulders draw into their soldierly stance, and he pushes away from Sherlock, letting the night air settle between them. 

“Um —” John rubs at the back of his neck, looks at the ground. His flies are still undone, drooping, and his tunic tugged askew. His gun stays, hard, on his hip. 

“No one need know,” Sherlock says, his voice a hard, unexpected mockery of John’s own. John looks at him, finally, eyes wide and white and startled in the moonlight. “I only mean —” He bites off his own words. John doesn’t stop staring.

“Jesus, Sherlock, is that what this — You’re trying to prove something, then, to show me up? I —” John forces his breath out, flexes his hand. Sherlock watches the curl of his fist: each finger rolling in, a tight pulse, a release. His own fingers twitch. 

“No,” he says, “that isn’t —” Though perhaps it is. Revealing a truth; proving a point; showing them both that he’s not a fool for trusting to the brush of John’s hands, the lingering glances between them. The truth of John’s body, wet and slick and cutting through the water, and his cock hard as Sherlock’s own, and his mouth panting with the edge of danger. 

“It’s not? Then what? Convenient? A — a test?”

“You’re the one who —” John wipes the back of his hand across his mouth at Sherlock’s words, like scrubbing away that first kiss. 

“I don’t —” John’s teeth click together, hard; his mouth is a settled, thin line. 

“Fine,” Sherlock says. “You don’t — what, you don’t fuck like that, you don’t suck cocks or take them up your arse or kiss men on the mouth because you’re too, too what? Soldierly? Too English? Too much of a man?” He spits his words, enjoying the way John recoils from _cock,_ from _arse._ He’s stepped toward John, unknowingly, and John stands firm and looks up at him, through the narrow space between them. 

“No,” John says, a harsh bark, snapping against the gently weaving leaves of the tree above them. “I don’t. I never —”

Sherlock doesn’t answer, but lets the sceptical click of his tongue speak for him. John shoves his hands to his pockets, and seems to realise at once that his trousers are still undone. The hunch of his shoulders telegraphs his embarrassment as he buttons them, looking away. Uniform once more straightened, he is again Constable Watson, again a soldier. “I meant what I said,” John says, obliquely. “I’m — I won’t tell anyone.”

“Of course you won’t,” Sherlock says, dismissively. “You couldn’t, not without revealing your own — participation.” He curses the darkness of the night for concealing the extent of John’s no-doubt-spreading flush. Is it the uneven crimson of anger, the high pink of embarrassment, or the spread, deep flush of arousal? Would John know the difference? 

“Yes, well —” John exhales. The shift of his shoulder, barely perceptible against the darkness of the night, suggests his clenching fist. “Tell me the truth,” he says, in a sudden rush.

“I —”

“About the bomb-maker; about your purposes. Tell me the truth, and I’ll decide.”

“Decide what?”

“Whether to turn you in. Or —”

“Or join me,” Sherlock finishes for him; John’s silence confirms it. His very wavering suggests that he won’t turn Sherlock in, either way; John has proved, again and again, that his code of morals is stringent in only a few places. All else is malleable, suggestible. In need of a commander. John shifts: parade rest. “I don’t like not knowing,” Sherlock begins. “Whatever his scheme, this Donovan is experimenting in my back garden, and I don’t much care for that.”

“You like to be the only one doing that,” John says, his dry humour barely masking interest. Sherlock resists a grin.

“Yes, well. It’s unpredictable, and anything that seems unpredictable must have logic behind it.”

“This’ll help you find out, then? Whatever your plan is — it will — unmask him?”

“You read to many sensational novels.” _Unmask,_ really. 

“No, of course, no need for dramatics,” John retorts. Sherlock narrows his eyes, then remembers John cannot see his expression. 

“Those are the terms,” he says, with perhaps more coldness than necessary. 

“And when it’s done? Once you’ve discovered the plan? You’ll allow me to take it to Danielson?”

“Yes, yes, of course.” A small lie, really. He may, after all; Danielson has been an ally before. 

“Fine,” John says, the tightness of his words beginning to lift. “I’ll help. Now, do you mind?” He jerks his chin to the motorcar. “If I’m to be demoted, I’d rather it be on a full night’s sleep.”

++

Sherlock’s knuckles ache by the time he arrives back at Norbury: clutching to the wheel, mind anywhere but on the road ahead of him. John had departed with a thin-eyed glance through the window and a jerky thump of his fist to the roof as a goodbye; Sherlock had inclined his chin, sharply, in response, some ghastly parody of camaraderie. The semen in his drawers had cooled, stickily, and the crook of his neck throbbed with the bruising of John’s teeth. 

In his chamber, he cleans himself, his movements perfunctory, and leaves his dinner jacket crumpled on the floor to sleep in his stiff-fronted shirt, collar and cuffs discarded on his dressing table. The plaster of his ceiling sags, water-stained and decayed with age, and he traces its familiar shadows and bulges and doesn’t sleep.

So. He has a — comrade? partner? — assistant in John. Hardly necessary, and yet — he is perhaps useful. Connections; brawn; the might of the British government behind him: John may yet prove invaluable. Sherlock repeats John’s qualifications to himself, building them up large and looming in the back garden of his mind palace. Soldier, constable; brave, though he wants to seem cautious; moral, though malleable; thrill-seeking and sharp to obey an order. Ready to follow Sherlock; warm-handed, wet-mouthed; sharp-fisted and angry. Useful, yes: Sherlock leaves John there, standing at parade rest in the garden; its hedges creep up to envelop him, the wind gentle through their tight-woven leaves, and somewhere far behind him a grenade explodes.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[Irish War Romance (1921)](http://youtu.be/LUzLuskirKM)** (LOL)
> 
> No notes this chapter!


	16. On the Road

Danielson doesn’t bother to berate John; he simply assigns him to the worst duties for the next week. If they’d still had latrines, he’d be mucking them. As it is, he does night guard duty for the O’Brien boys four nights running, and mobs in the kitchens every morning after. The boys are mouthy, restive after weeks in the cells, and keep up a steady string of taunts and jeers to the guards on duty. Finnegan stomps up the stairs after his shift each day snarling angry, though John has noticed the boys are more subdued and Hughes more chipper when John takes over from Hughes in the evenings.

“What do you _do_ to them?” John asks as they sit across from each other the morning of the transport. Before Hughes sits a huge plate of eggs the texture of india-rubber, which he eats with relish. Pieces of John’s Webley are strewn across the table, disassembled on the scarred surface, and he picks up each in turn to rub clean. He’d eaten at dawn after a few hours kip between guarding and cleaning; Danielson had wanted him day-alert to assist with the transport.

“I learnt a lot of dirty songs in the army,” Hughes says with a placid smile. He shoves a bite into his mouth, then says around the food, “And saw a lot of men killed in gruesome ways.” 

“You’re a bastard and a cad,” John says, though he’s laughing. Hughes grins around his eggs, tipping his chin, and spreads his elbows more comfortably. John feels something like relief settle in his gut; he’s caught Hughes looking at him, sidelong and querying, more than once since the night of the dance, and what Hughes searches for hasn’t quite made itself apparent yet. He’s not said a word, though by the hushed, curious glances sent his way John knows that tales of the fight have made their way around. Of Sherlock’s involvement, no doubt, and — 

John sets the trigger mechanism down and lifts the barrel, clamping down on his thoughts. Even curious, the expression on Hughes’s face is ever placid; he’s a damned bastard to play cards with, is the truth, and not knowing what he knows — or suspects — leaves John floundering in the space between jovial civility and guarded caution. If Hughes knows, if he suspects — has he ever, himself — has he memories of a fellow in the cold, dreary horrors of the trenches, or a chap in his youth, running together in the Manchester streets? Of late, John’s mind ever wonders: is it so easy for them all, solider-sworn men, to slip into? Like a bad habit, like a easy hand of cards? 

“Did you hear?” he says, to redirect his thoughts as much as to change the subject. “Another one, this morning.” 

“Another?” John nods.

“Heard it from Moran after breakfast. Twelve of ‘em, out on patrol on the Bantry road, when, bang, whole flying column out of the woods, bombs flying —” He shakes his head.

“Fuck. How many’s that, this week? Seven?”

“Between us and the Auxies. And that attack on the barracks in Newmarket.”

“Or the burning of that Sergeant’s house in Fermoy,” John adds. Hughes tips his chin, eyebrows waggling. 

“Giving us a run,” Hughes says. He taps against the edge of the table, full of excited impatience.

John returns to his gun, bringing the now-clean pieces back together. The metal is firm, heavy in his hands, the motions familiar. He has a sudden, sharp flash back to the front: cleaning his guns in the hazy dawn light each day, the grit and the mud and the blood rubbed away, for a moment, before it all started up again. It became a ritual, a laying of hands, a rosary: meagre prayers spared for gods he has little belief in. Murray hadn’t teased him about it, Murray for whom every queer little tic, every superstition was a source of ribbing. He’d watched John, though, solemn and reverent, like John’s hands would bless them all. 

“And?” Hughes prompts; John knows what he intends to ask.

“One — Frederickson?” John shrugs; he hadn’t known him. Most skirmishes left them with a few wounds and a few angry stories, but the deaths are more and more frequent. He slots the stock back together, screws it in place, and tucks the Webley into the holster under his arm, shoving back his chair as he stands.

“Come on, then. Let’s go get shot at.” John jerks his head toward the door.

“Yeah, alright,” Hughes says, unable to suppress the grin twitching at the corners of his lips. 

++

He won’t be sorry to see them go; the extra guard duty has left them all impatient and sour-faced, feeling short-handed on patrols and strung too tight in their duties. As they load both boys up in the back of the truck, though, faces sallow and narrow wrists cuffed together, John tries not to let his mind dwell on their future fates. As part of one of the more infamous families in this area, the boys will no doubt be made examples of, sentenced to hard labor at Kilmainham, John expects. Danny stumbles trying to climb into the Crossley; with his hands cuffed in front of him and his body awkward and ungainly with youth and a few weeks’ confinement, his every step falls ill-figured, tenuous. John grips his elbow, helps lift him in, and doesn’t acknowledge the pitiful gratitude in Danny’s eyes. 

The brothers face one another, two men on either side of each, and stare at their feet. They wear the clothes they were picked up in, given a vigorous wash by Mrs Danielson that has, nonetheless, left the two looking rumpled and overly young. They’ve been allowed perfunctory washes, but still Ned’s hair slicks greasily to his scalp; he shoves it back with nervous fingers, lifting his bound hands together to scrape at it awkwardly. Both stay quiet, shoulders shrugged in on themselves like hedgepigs trying to make themselves disappear.

At the rear of the Crossley, John holds his rifle steady as they move out. They’ve a long drive ahead of them — not all the way up to Dublin, but they’ll drive most of the day before stopping in Kilkenny to transfer the boys to an RIC unit whose orders have them heading north. The boys might stand trial at the Castle in a month’s time or so, if a jury can be gathered long enough to hear it. If so, John and Hughes will take the train north for the day to testify. _Yes, they had a lewis gun. Yes, we took them into custody._ If not, their capture will be considered reason enough to hold them without end. Either way, fates sealed in the sure and abiding words of two Englishmen. 

That first year of the war, his father’s death and the crumbling remains of the farmhouse left far behind with one short, easy lie — date of birth 21 July 1896 — it had taken a few months for the awful reality to settle into the back of his mind, where it lingered still. Being killed was one thing, over in one terrible, painful blast, but being captured loomed large. What little preparation they were given to withstand interrogation seemed damningly insufficient; it was only once at the Front that John realized they weren’t expected to withstand it at all. 

Beside him, Finnegan’s foot taps arrhythmically against the floor, his thigh juddering against John’s. At least the increase in ambushes has convinced the older RIC men, too, to keep their guns at the ready. Even MacKenzie and O’Mahony keep a steady eye out, and with fair form, too; John stays stationed at the rear, scanning the surrounding countryside as they pass, and O’Toole John’s put to work driving. He learnt that, too, at his father’s side, and handles the Crossley with a delicate deftness John’s seen in the best ambulance drivers. 

After three hours, they stop off in a clearing and change formation. John scans the area around them, soft rolling hills and waving grass, as Hughes relieves him. Swinging up into the cab of the truck next to O’Toole, John keeps his eyes firmly ahead. 

Every clump of gorse, every copse; hills, blind hairpin turns, bogs, and ruins: the countryside presents an eerie, changeable landscape, a hider’s paradise. The thick swelter of summer mires around them, a hazy, choked fog to the air; it sticks under their clothes and works into every metal join on every gun, insidious, and more than one man has the wet, gasping cough of a late summer ‘flu. _At least it’s not raining,_ they tell each other, but the unsettling heat still clouds the mind, leaving their reflexes sluggish. The sun glints off the windscreen, leaving John’s eyes sore from squinting after the next few hours pass. O’Toole drives with a clean precision, but still the tender rocks and starts, shoving them against one another. John’s elbow aches from banging against the side door, and the bark of pain from one deep pothole distracts him just long enough that he doesn’t see the grenade until it’s landing in his lap. 

Someone’s cursing — he can’t discern voices — and O’Toole wrenches the Crossley to the side, throwing John against the door again, and John’s hands are on his gun and on the grenade; it’s heavy and wet in his hand and he wonders, strangely, if that’s his blood, before scrambling to his feet and launching the bomb over the bonnet. “Down! Get dow —” The blast swallows his word and slams him, hard, against the rear of the cabin.

His back wrenches and he falls, tumbling over and — it’s a long, sickly moment before John can open his eyes, even, and when he does he wants to close them again, immediately, for the searing, shocking pain that peels across them, the heavy drag of sand and smoke. 

All is silent — no — ringing — no — screaming, the whine of incoming bombs and the impact of bullets. John scrambles at his hip for his gun, but it’s not — he reaches up, over his shoulder, for the barrel of his rifle, and shifts — agonising — to wrench it free. 

Rising up, he sees the broad, working shoulders of his company, jerking back with each shot — form faulty in the heat of gunfire; the thought passes over his mind distractedly — but they are shooting, firing back. Shoving his way between two men — Finnegan on his left, ducked down to reload, and Blake grim faced, his cap knocked off and a smear of blood sticking his hair to his forehead — John takes aim at the hazy fog from which the gunfire hails, and shoots. The O’Brien boys cower, thrown to the floor, on elbows and knees with their bound hands clutched behind their necks, paltry protection. 

If they can’t see the IRA, at least, there’s a chance the column can’t see them. Blind shooting the blind. What can they do, then, but keep firing. When the grenade fell into John’s lap, O’Toole had jerked the wheel hard right, turning the tender broadside across the road, so they at least had what cover the sides provide, and a row of men shooting into the blank wall of murky smoke. From the rear of the truck, Hughes commands a Vickers gun, the _tat tat tat_ of its automatic fire soothing in its insistent force. 

Yet the firing continues. Staggered pauses mark each reload, but still the bullets fly. 

John tastes mud, gunpowder, the acrid metallic tang of his own blood: each pulse a thrill. Butt of the rifle smooth against his shoulder, braced and soft, comfortable; his hands move smoothly between his bandoleer and the cracked-open barrel, round after round. The smoke-spread air between the two cohorts stifles, leaving the crack of gunshot punctuated only by one or two short, sharp cries of marks hit. If they’ve come for the O’Briens it seems the boys aren’t in on the plan; they huddle together in the tangle of legs, either fear-stiffened or realising that their best hope to avoid being shot is to stay below the protection of the tender walls. 

It’s hard to say who has the high ground, really, in the mazy confusion, and for one long moment, in the rhythm of _pull-eject-reload,_ John wonders if they haven’t wandered into purgatory, doomed to an endless Sisyphean battle. The rebels have the benefit of their ambuscade, the Tans their trucks, and neither the advantage of clear sight nor unlimited ammunition. They’ll try to hold out, but —

A sudden gasp; Blake slumps against him, his rifle clattering over the side of the Crossley and to the ground. “Fuck — Blake —” John ducks his head, shaking the man’s limp arm; Blake groans, enough to reassure John he’s still alive, and John shoves him off and leans back into the firing. Grasping at his bandoleer, he finds nothing but empty slots. _Goddamn._

There are boxes of ammunition shoved in the front of each Crossley; he gropes to reach them in the melee, tossing the lid off one finally to find it empty. He’s cursing at whoever had the goddamn job of resupplying when the sharp rumble of a motor roars up behind them. 

To their credit, the troops in the back of the Crossley swing their rifles to confront the new threat before realising that it is, in fact, another tender packed with Auxies, who immediately join in the shooting with enthusiasm. With a shuddered sigh of relief, John returns to fumbling around for more ammunition, finding a box shoved up front, lid dented on. He kicks it off with a heel, sending bullets rolling across the floor, and fists enough to keep him in the action.

It trails off, though, even as he reloads; the IRA have either run short of ammunition or decided the Tans’ reinforced numbers make their ambush too risky. The air goes quiet long before it clears as they wait, rifles drawn, for some confirmation of the rebel retreat.

“All clear!” Moran’s voice cuts through the fog, and the Tans hesitantly lift their weapons. His tight, harsh grin appears before the rest of him while he walks toward the tender, holstering his pistol and cocking his head.

“In a spot of trouble?” he says, amused, as he surveys the damage done to the Crossley. John smiles tightly and leans down to help heave the O’Brien boys back into their seats. Under the acrid tang of gunpowder the sharp, bitter stench of urine betrays their fear. Danny shakes in John’s grip; John doesn’t look him in the eye when settling the boy upright.

“Looked like we were handling it,” Hughes says as he pulls the Vickers gun up and cracks it open to load a fresh magazine. Moran barks a harsh, short laugh.

“We’ll give you a lift back,” Moran says, jerking his head toward the undamaged tender. “That wreck won’t be making much movement soon.” The cab is half blasted-out, windscreen shattered and in pieces across the seat — and O’Toole’s uniform, by its tattered appearance. All along the sides, the Crossley is pocked with bullet holes, tyres no doubt decimated, and, surrounded by littered shell casings and discarded magazines, Blake smiles grimly up at John from his position supine on the floor. He grips at his side where the blood has slowed to a thick, heavy trickle. They’re in no shape to go on with the transfer.

“All right,” John says, nodding to Moran. “Get Blake out and on the floor, there, and take the prisoners. Hughes, O’Toole, you go along; the rest of us will walk back to Clonmel and see what the barracks there have to offer.”

Blake grimaces as they move him, hands more swift than graceful, and the Auxies treat the O’Brien boys with indifference, brusquely settling them in the back of the tender. From the rear of the vehicle, Moran nods to John as they set out, leaving only kicked-up dust. 

++

The sergeant in Clonmel lends them the use of a decrepit Ford and the barracks telephone. 

“They’re coming back here? Damn it, Watson!” The thump of Danielson’s fist against the wall reverberates down the telephone cord. 

“I’m afraid so, sir,” John lets every apologetic note he can muster creep into his voice. “The Crossley, too, sir. It might be repairable, but we’d need to get it somewhere to repair it, first…” he allows his sentence to trail off, hearing Danielson’s grumble at the other end. 

“And you said it’s the bloody Auxies bringing them back? Smyth’s boys?”

“Sir.”

“Strange,” Danielson says; John had thought the same, though hasn’t yet let the thought into words. “Rather far from their usual patrol area.”

“Good for us, though, sir.” A good fifty miles, John would say, and well overlapping the territory of A Company in Inistioge. 

Danielson murmurs a distracted agreement. “I’ll ring Kilkenny and Dublin, let them know the prisoners are ours for a few more days. You boys get your arses back here; this is no time to have my staff out on a country joy ride.”

“Sir.” John rings off with a sigh. They rarely know about ambushes in advance, and despite the surprise attack, they had been holding their own. Somehow he still feels like a lamb taken surprise by the knife of the slaughter.

++

The journey back to Macroom takes an interminable five hours, all seven men sardined into the old motor-car, which rattles precipitously at speed and groans like a gouty old man when O’Toole goes easy on the throttle. John has the side door half-open before they pull up to the barracks, and they stumble out with road-stiffened muscles into the empty courtyard. There’s light yet: yellow summer sun stretching long shadows over the town. After they gulp down a cold supper, MacKenzie goes to spell Hughes on prisoner guard duty and John meanders into town.

He walks aimlessly, with half a mind to drop by the castle and try to ferret out some hint of why Moran and his men were so far north, and another insistent thought that points his feet toward Norbury. He puts paid to both, though, and resolves to calm his battle-stormed nerves with a drink instead. 

John quite suddenly realises that the street has gone hushed, the stillness broken only by the guffawing of a group of Auxiliary men leant against the front stoop of the pub. John follows their eyes down the street, surprised to see Molly, walking alone down the dusty cobbled street. Even from John’s vantage he can perceive the tight clench of her jaw. 

He steps forward and greets her, but his voice falters as he catches sight of her hair underneath her old-fashioned felt hat. What he had thought was Molly’s usual dishevelled, haphazard hairstyle is revealed as the unkempt edges of a shorn scalp, roughly handled. “Molly, what --” he asks, forgetting formality in his concern.

Molly’s hand lifts, hovering at her neck as if to remind herself, and she shakes her head. “It’s nothing.”

“It’s not — did someone do this do you?” Behind them, one of the ADRIC men sniggers, and John shoots him a glare.

Molly blinks, pressing her lips together. “It’s just — some of the local lads thought I — thought maybe I was stepping out where I shouldn’t be.”

John frowns; he hadn’t known Molly to have a sweetheart. “With a soldier, you mean?”

“I, um —” Molly swallows, glances away. “Just — too much time with soldiers in general, they thought.” She speaks to a place over his shoulder, matter-of-fact. 

“Will it cause you trouble to be seen with me?” John asks, concerned. 

Molly juts her chin out, stubbornly. “I don’t care if it does,” she says, and looks surprised at her own vehemence. “They’re just bullies, those boys.”

“Yes, but --” John gestures to her hair before catching himself, bringing his hand down with some embarrassment. 

“They’ve done their worst now. They won’t touch me further.” John doubts that; the rebels might consider themselves righteous men, but death and worse often comes to those perceived as traitors, women or not. “Now,” she says, inclining her head toward Mrs Dougherty’s tea room, “I’d give my right hand for a wee cuppa and some of Mrs Dougherty’s cakes.” John laughs, shaking his head. 

He offers his arm to Molly, who slips her small - and very much attached - hand into his elbow, and leads the way to the tea room. 

They settle at a table in the corner; John feels artless, ungainly, in the delicate chairs. Molly’s hands flutter at her hat’s brim for a moment with the instinct to remove it before she deliberately places her hands in her lap. 

The sallow electric lights make bruises of Molly’s eyes, and John notices the ragged peel of her lower lip, where she’s worried the skin to bleeding. “Molly, are you quite —” he says, and Molly lifts her tired grey eyes and smiles.

“Not quite,” she says. “But enough. There’s been a lot of — of work, lately, for Da. We’ve been —” She shakes her head, looking down at her hands cupping her tea. The nails are ragged-worn and cut short, the fingertips dry. 

“Oh, I —”

“The raids, you know,” Molly says, words falling in a tumble. “They’re so frequent now, and the bodies we — I know, knew many, and their families just want — a burial, proper-like, with Mass and all, but gatherings are —” 

“I’m sorry,” John says, the word hard and true. “I didn’t think — I can’t think of them as having families, sometimes, and friends and —” he nods at her; she’s twisting her handkerchief around her fingers — “neighbours and all sorts.”

She ducks her head; her chest rises quickly, and he can just hear the harsh sound of swallowed sobs.

“Listen — if you need —” he gestures to the table, uncertain. “Anything, really — a shoulder, or tea, or a — a strong arm — you just tell me. Okay?”

She swallows tightly and nods. “You’ve been so. So kind.” Next to her saucer, her hand clenches up, rumpling the tablecloth. With a sudden impulse, he touches the bridge of her fingers, gently, until her hand relaxes.

“We’re here to protect you, you know,” he says, then grimaces. “That sounds awfully —”

“No,” Molly interrupts. “No, it’s nice. To be reminded.” Her lashes flick up, then down, as she looks back at the table. “To know it’s not all, all hateful fighting and, and people dead.”

“Well.” John coughs. “Of course.” Molly’s eyes flick back up to him, then narrow as she seems to finally, properly, take him in.

“You look awful,” she says, bluntly, then presses her lips together, pinking. “I mean —”

“I’m sure it’s true,” John laughs, glancing down. His uniform, caked and dusty, is smeared with blood at the cuffs — Blake’s, likely — and rumpled. He’d pulled his tie off in the untenable heat of the motorcar and, with his hat settled on the table at his elbow, his hair is likely dark and grimy with sweat. “We got into it a bit, up Clonmel ways.”

Her eyes widen. “Are you all —?”

“None for your table, don’t worry. Blake was hit, but he’s in bed, sleeping it off like a babe. Our Crossley, though, is done for.”

“Clonmel? Isn’t that far for patrols?” At John’s glance, Molly’s face crumples into set-in worry. “I just mean that’s a long day’s trip.”

“Yes,” John confirms, the thought niggling the back of his mind. “On another mission,” he says, leaving it there. 

Molly tenses, seeming to wait for more, but when John says nothing, she murmurs, “Ah. Well, do be careful. I —” She clears her throat, looks down at her hands, thumbing across the place John had touched. “I don’t want to see your body on my table,” she says finally, all in a rush, then touches one hand to his, quickly, and stands up too abruptly. Her chair wobbles at the sudden movement but doesn’t fall; a few of the other patrons look over at them, not for the first time. John’s conscious of becoming local gossip and, as he stands to lead Molly to the door, he thinks of the possibilities: his hand at the small of her back, claiming; standing up together in a church; a long, quiet life and children. Her flickering lashes and her small, pink lips, and her deft little hands.

He follows but stays two steps behind her, a careful distance.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[Staged Bridge Assault (1920)](http://youtu.be/3Dx8kqyjIHU)**
> 
> **1\. The boys might stand trial at the Castle.** Dublin Castle, the seat of the British administration in Dublin, managed to hold out from attacks throughout the War of Independence, filled to overcrowding with British civil servants, intelligence staff, and military officers, including General Tudor. Any criminal trials would have been held at Exchange Court. However, beginning in June and July of 1920, the courts began to fail as jurors refused to attend trials across the south and west of Ireland and soon spreading. Martial law, which enabled courts-martial for all criminal matters, would not be declared until December; in the meantime, the British criminal and civil court systems in Ireland were unpredictable at best and non-existent at worst. 
> 
> **2\. Hair cropping.** Hair cropping was the most frequent punishment or retaliation used on women — by both the IRA and the RIC. Perpetrated against women who were perceived as acting treasonous to either side, whether by fraternising, informing, selling goods, or passing messages, hair cropping or shaving served as both punishment and warning to others. Reprisals against women rarely went further: Leeson attests that there is no evidence of any Irish women being killed in a reprisal by either side.


	17. A Furtive Lorry

_October 1920_  
 _Macroom, Co. Cork_

Footsteps. Sherlock sucks in on his cigarette, holding his breath for the count of one-two-three as they pass, then lets the smoke stream out his nostrils, barely visible in the fading light. The steps move past him, familiar cadence, and he drops the cigarette butt and grinds it out, then takes a few steps back to survey the wall. In this back corner, the bricks — masoned together after the Fenians rose up, back in ‘67 — have crumbled and chipped in the damp, leaving handholds that make ascent a mere moment’s climb. Avoiding the jagged slate embedded in the top proves more difficult, requiring a careful placement of hands, but with his leather gloves and his greatcoat wrapped tight he avoids any serious scrapes and lands, quiet-footed, in the courtyard, where he meets the end of a gun barrel. 

“Not any way to treat a guest, surely.” Sherlock straightens, brushing his hands against his greatcoat; the tip of the rifle dips, then drops, as John sighs.

“You know I am authorised to shoot any intruders on sight.”

“I’m hardly an intruder. I’m an agent of the state, remember?”

John glances side-to-side, but they’re alone in the courtyard. They’d best be; Sherlock had gone through five cigarettes waiting across the wall for John’s sentry shift to begin. He doesn’t correct Sherlock, doesn’t say that the case is long over and that anything they’re involved in is far from sanctioned. “My shift just started,” he says instead.

“I know. We’ve three hours, anyway; I’ll just wait.” He makes to settle on a rickety bench shoved against the back wall. Once, it might have shielded napping constables under the shade of a broad-branched willow, but all that remains of the tree is a scarred stump. Cut to avoid any access into the courtyard, no doubt. 

“You can’t just —” John looks away, to Sherlock’s left; in the low light, Sherlock can just make out the flexing of John’s empty hand. “I’m not out here to socialise,” he says instead. Sherlock snorts.

“You won’t even notice my presence.” Allowing a wide, close-lipped smile to stretch his cheeks, Sherlock assembles himself on the short bench, head propped on its iron armrest and knees akimbo. It’ll hardly do for comfort, but when walking the corridors of his mind, Sherlock cares little for externalities. 

“Sherlock.” John’s voice, weary; Sherlock lifts one eyelid and says, quick and flat, “With the fading light and the angle of approach from the door, no one inside the barracks will be able to make me out, here, even if they step outside. I have no intention of interrupting your sentry duties, but we must make haste the moment you are released, therefore our progress will be more timely if we depart together.”

“Depart to where?” John asks. Sherlock notes that, though John has put on a note of irritation, his pacing steps have quickened, the small traces of a limp which had given him away earlier vanished. In response, Sherlock closes his eyes and presses his hands together, tucked against his chin. The last sound he hears before pushing open the door to his mind is John’s sigh.

The garden gate of his childhood, scratches in the whitewash reproduced in his mind exactly, swings open to a narrow road, pitted with the passing of carriage wheels over centuries, and empty. Sherlock paces, eyes sweeping over the topography, and calls up the clues which will bring him — him and John — to this very spot in a mere few hours. An Ordnance Survey map of the area, carefully annotated with each ambush, every blast-gutted road, each felled tree, and the narrow, meandering free lines that emerge. A note: intercepted, copied, then sent on its way, its duplicate finding its way to Sherlock. Train schedules and news reports: which lines and times are interrupted and, more interestingly, which are allowed to proceed unmolested. Movements and happenings, dutifully reported by his Irregulars. All coming together to suggest the night’s probable activities, and their likely location. These pieces have been the hard work of nearly a month, during which time he’d hardly seen John but for passing in town.

He paces out the road, noting once more each memorised tree, bush, and rock, but with each step he hears John’s steady pace beside him, his hushed breath an echo of Sherlock’s own lungs. There — that clump at the corner — they’ll hide there, he thinks, and places their bodies there, together, close in the heavy darkness of the night, the sounds of crushed leaves and rustling branches and their breath. John’s thigh, pressed against his, and his hand grasping, digging into the soil, and — 

Sherlock’s eyes fly open. Across the courtyard, John stills for a moment so brief Sherlock might wonder if he’d imagined it, then continues to pace. Even with the light that flickers down from the barracks windows, it is too dark to read his watch, so Sherlock peers up to the sky instead. An hour still, at least. 

A few deep breaths. John still paces. Sherlock brings his eyes closed, heavily, and wills his mind blank for the remainder of the wait.

++

Even on foot, they arrive earlier than Sherlock had calculated, John’s pace sped by anticipation, no doubt. He’d rather have taken the motor, but there is no inconspicuous place to hide it. Still, it’s a fine night for a brisk walk and a short wait. Aiming his torch, Sherlock glances at his watch, which reveals — ah. Perhaps not too short of a wait, then, after all; it seems he’s rather undershot his timing. Next to him, John stands, even the set of his shoulders quizzical. 

Sherlock had provided only the barest facts needed to bring John away from the barracks, after his sentry duty finished in the fallen night. An explosives shipment and a likely exchange to happen somewhere along this road. 

“How many?” John had asked, Lee Enfield still held loosely in one hand. Sherlock shook his head.

“To avoid attracting too much attention, I would say two or three at most with the shipment. But half-a-dozen to receive, at least.”

The lantern hung over the barracks back door cast a harsh-edged shadow over John’s face, mimicked in the narrow set of his lips. “Too many for us to take on our own. I’ll rouse up Hughes and O’Toole —”

“No,” Sherlock had interrupted. “We’re not confronting them.”

“But if they’re —” John snapped his teeth together on his rising voice, then continued, lower. “If they’re exchanging explosives, we have to intercept them.”

“No,” Sherlock said again, firmly. “If we see who picks them up and mark every time the new explosives show up, we can trace the trading and distribution pattern more easily. Just for a week, maybe two,” he added quickly, seeing John gearing up to argue. “I’ll keep all of my connections watching. Chance is, we’ll be able to intercept most before they’re discharged.” He schooled his face to stay open, kept his eyes on John’s until John nodded, finally. Truth is, following the movements of who knows how many grenades is too much for even Sherlock’s talents and network, but he has no intention of revealing how much he knows already by showing up at the site of exchange at precisely the right time and making a nuisance of himself.

“Fine,” John said, finally. The sound of his voice, hushed, was snatched away by the creaking of the back door, opened by one of the barrel-chested old RIC veterans, coming out to relieve John. Sherlock took a step back just quickly enough to melt into the shadow of the wall, and stayed until he could skirt around to follow John, through the barracks and out into the night. 

Now, on the road, Sherlock leads John into the scraggy brush on the side, the dim light of his torch just enough to illuminate what he knows from his visit earlier in the day. Calculating the most likely spot — plenty of cover for the exchange of goods but clear enough to avoid any ambushes — Sherlock had committed it to memory to evaluate every possible hiding spot. The chosen area — a scraggly bush only just covering the surface of a broad-faced boulder — will be too far down the road to hear well, but in sight range. The darkness should be enough to cover the traces of their approach; even so, as they settle down, Sherlock arranges the tall grasses around them, straightening bent stalks and brushing dirt back into place. Beside him, John’s quiet movements — extending his leg, leaning into the rock behind them, easing his revolver from its holster to settle in his lap — overtake the noises of the evening. 

“So,” John says eventually, voice dropped to a cautious whisper, “when is this rendezvous scheduled to happen?”

“Oh,” Sherlock says, at his normal volume, “half an hour, perhaps? Maybe three-quarters.” 

John snorts. “Not exactly a precise science, this espionage business.” He lets his voice settle back into something like a usual volume, only a husky edge giving away the slight tempering. “Do we just wait, then?”

Sherlock hums, something close to a response. His hand, planted in the soil to brace as he had seated himself earlier, is very close to John’s thigh, his wrist just brushing the fabric of John’s trousers. With the torches off, all around them the objects of the world take on the grim grey of night, shadowy and amorphous. Only the clouded light of the moon allows Sherlock to see the figure of John when he turns his head: brim of his cap covering a no-doubt disarray of hair, the blunt turn of his nose falling to narrow lips which work expressively even as John is silent. The tip of his rifle, propped on the rock behind them, and the dull metal gleam of the revolver in his — in his lap. 

Even with little light to guide him, Sherlock can see the cant of John’s hips, not-quite-relaxed, the brace of his heel against the earth, the bend of his knee ready for movement, a tautness all so familiar that it settles strangely in his gut. Observations from memory, a bodily form he had committed to the shallow recesses of his mind without thinking of it, without conscious purpose. 

With each inhale, John’s elbow brushes against Sherlock’s arm; with each exhale they fall apart, the space of their breaths a gulf between them. With his next intake of breath, John will speak, will ask again if they have any tasks other than waiting. Not an impatient man, really, but the tenseness of his body needs feeding with purpose. With his next breath, then, Sherlock stoppers John’s question by dropping his hand onto John’s thigh and gripping. Enough that he feels the roughness of his trousers under his hand — _John’s breath on his neck, Sherlock’s wrist pinned against the motorcar_ — and the sudden tightening of John’s thigh muscle. Beyond that tightness, though, John doesn’t move: no breath, no groan or gusty exhale, but no shifting away or throwing off of Sherlock’s hand. Just his thigh, tight and tense and waiting, under Sherlock’s hand.

With a slow, deliberate movement, Sherlock slides his hand over and lifts the gun off John’s lap; he fumbles a bit, its weight more dense than expected, and at the drag of its tip across his flies, John groans — finally — the sound deep and earthy and aching. Sherlock settles the revolver to John’s side, next to his hand braced against the earth, and lifts himself up to turn and settle between John’s legs. John breathes out, heavily, through his nose, and spreads his legs just enough that his knees cup loosely around Sherlock’s kneeling form. Sherlock doesn’t want to proceed slowly, wants to tug John’s trousers and shorts down and take his cock and — but he does, he presses his thumbs into the crease of John’s hips until John slackens, letting his hips fall open. In the dark, reaching, fumbling at the buckle on his belt, thumbing open the tight buttons of his flies, tugging awkwardly at the taut wool, finally feeling it give way to the sweat-damp cotton below. John’s cock, hardening beneath Sherlock’s rubbing knuckles; John’s breath, coming more rapidly; John’s shifting calves against Sherlock’s feet.

He waits for John to protest, or push him away; with anyone else, he would be sure, now, that their interest would overcome any moral resistance, but John proves surprising again and again. Unexpected, unsure of his own desires. But John does not. John sits, not touching Sherlock, legs spread and hips open and breath coming quick and silent. Darkness all around them heightening every absent sound, every minute shift. He doesn’t help as Sherlock tugs at his shorts, lets him shift the fabric, lets him cup his hand around the base of his cock, lets him pet at it, filling and hardening against his palm.

Bracing himself with one hand in the dirt, Sherlock awkwardly lowers his body, elbow bumping against John’s thigh brusquely; John grunts, surprised, when Sherlock finds the head of his cock in the dark, mouths at its tip, and his gasp is barely stifled when Sherlock’s lips open, wrap around the head, when his tongue presses up — up against velvet-soft flesh and the furled ridge of his foreskin, against the bitter-salt taste of him. He keeps his eyes down, at the dark-moving shadow of his own hand, wishing he could glance up and catch John’s eyes, see the slackness of his lips and the flush of his cheeks, all obscured in the darkness of the night. He hasn’t done this since Victor, Victor who would cup the back of his skull, weave his fingers through Sherlock’s hair, would softly guide him until — until all softness was gone, until he twisted his hands into fists, Sherlock’s hair tugged hard and tight, prickling pain in his scalp and forceful breaths through his nose. John’s hands stay at his side, in the dirt, not even brushing against Sherlock’s braced arm or — or thumbing against his cheek, or pressing against his throat. Not soft, not harsh, only absent. 

His mouth works, his fingers gripping loosely, listening all the while to the cadence of John’s breath, to how he gives himself away in small, hitching gasps, dry and low to the smacking wetness of Sherlock’s mouth. Those soft sounds Sherlock tucks away, each curled around a particular flick of his tongue, the swallow of his throat, the press of his soft palate. John hasn’t a room yet; he stands at attention at the entrance of Sherlock’s mind, questioning gaze and solid form a presence he must pass with each entry, but now Sherlock doesn’t mind, heaps the John of his mind with these moments, memories and movements and sounds, as if in so doing he guarantees their repetition in the future somewhere. In the light, maybe.

Against his moving tongue Sherlock feels the tightening of John’s cock, bollocks drawing in against the side of his hand, and John gives a warning grunt before he’s spilling into Sherlock’s mouth, hot and bitter at the back of his throat, hips held steady with the determined muscle of a soldier, shuddering only as he falls back, finally, with a low groan. Sherlock pulls away to the trailing end of John’s groan, sits back on his heels, wipes his mouth against his cuff. 

“They’re on their way,” he says, hearing the distant rumble of a motorcar. “You’d best clean yourself up.” John is still for a long moment before he coughs and, hands fumbling at first, tucks himself away and buttons and buckles. 

Sherlock accidentally kicks John’s knee while rolling off him; John laughs, low and husky, and says, “Easy there,” the first words to break his long silence, and they’re amused and light in a way that makes Sherlock pause, half-straddling John’s leg, until John flexes his knee and the bump of hard joint against the soft flesh of Sherlock’s inner thigh brings him — uncomfortably, aware of the heaviness of his own cock and his desire to just press down, to grasp John’s hand in his own and curl his hips in and drag his cock against the compact, tight line of John’s thigh — back to the moment, and he shifts away and sits once more, back against the rock and shoulder against John’s and cock firm and aching. 

He lifts John’s revolver — heavy, metal gone cold in its forgotten space between them — and hands it to John. Their hands brush in the exchange, lingering over-long before Sherlock lets his fall away. On the road behind them, the rumble of a motor grows closer and closer until it is nearly atop them, slowing, slowing, until it falls to a stop in just the spot Sherlock had suspected. John’s breath is back to its low, ready cadence; his own rises and falls shallowly, silently. 

A rustle of fabric — the creak of a car door — the metallic slam as it closes. To his right and just over his shoulder, Sherlock can make out movements as jerky silhouettes: a strange pantomime. Three men and an open motorcar, its back covered over with a tarpaulin which rustles gently with the wind. The driver remains in his seat as the other two clatter out, slamming the doors with little care to secrecy in the quiet, seemingly empty night.

A flame flickers briefly as the two men light cigarettes; the smoke wafts down to where they crouch, hidden. A Turkish blend, favoured by Germans. Not surprising, not with Casement’s trial revealing — along with so many things, suspicions and insinuations which Sherlock had, that last year at Belvedere, followed with an uncertain secrecy — the depths of the Irish-German alliance.

The men get through two German cigarettes each, John and Sherlock both cramped, still and tense, in their makeshift blind, before their rendezvous arrives. Six men in an old, battered touring car, all bearing the makeshift motley of belts, bandoleers, and badges which serve IRA volunteers in lieu of any uniform equipment. John’s breath tightens, quickens, and over his shoulder Sherlock can feel John’s attentive gaze on the men. He watches, too, identifying the men as best he can in the low light. Padraig, unsurprisingly, and two other men he knows by sight if not name, but the other three are unfamiliar. One a CO, clearly, by his peaked cap and the low, indistinct orders he gives. From the back of the motorcar they move six identical wooden crates, though Sherlock notes that their weights vary, with one distinctly lighter than the rest. Not all grenades, then. Lewis guns? They’re the right length.

Once all six crates are transferred, the men exchange a few words before the first group loads back into their motor and departs, reversing and turning to proceed back the way they arrived. Padraig and his men take a few minutes to conceal the crates, covering them with a loose travelling throw. A paltry cover, but they’re not going to be stopped in the middle of the night. John tenses as the motor turns over, keen to intercede, but he follows Sherlock’s sharp look and stays still. 

Sherlock allows the sound of the motor to die out before he shoves himself to standing. His legs prickle with the long inactivity, but he ignores the sensation, brushing his greatcoat off nonchalantly as John stands and shakes his limbs out.

“That it, then? Bloody anticlimactic.”

Sherlock snorts. “I’ve gotten all the information I need.”

“All the — You can’t bloody tell me you —” Sherlock looks over his shoulder, raises an eyebrow; John falls silent with a brief roll of his eyes heaven-wards. “Fine, fine.” He looks uneasily up and down the road. “Are we safe to just —”

“Yes, yes, neither has cause to return tonight.” Sherlock takes off down the road, John following.

With the rush of their mission dissipated, that which remains between them lurks, unvoiced: Sherlock’s touch on John, his mouth on John, John’s hands clutching at the dirt. John’s silence returns in the quiet space of the night. His silence — his unvoiced protests, his unuttered pleasures, his refusals left dormant in his mouth.

There they lie, still: John breathes normally, does not so much as clear his throat while they walk. But he he walks a half-step behind Sherlock, their arms never brushing, shoulders never bumping, a tense, fraught space held between their moving bodies.

So they walk. Silent but for the fall of their feet, the rustle of their clothing, they walk until they arrive at the fork which will take John, down one bend, back to Macroom, and Sherlock to Norbury. 

“Well,” John says, finally. His fingers drum against his pant leg. “This was. Well.” Sherlock blinks, but before he can muster a response, John tips his chin and turns sharply on his heel, the about-face and his rapidly departing footsteps punctuating the unsaid words. Sherlock waits until the bobbing trail of John’s torch disappears into the darkness before turning down the other path.

++

Sherlock doesn’t alter his step as he makes out the figure standing in the shadow of the stables, forcing himself to continue in his confident stride in order to turn nonchalantly when Padraig steps out.

“Late night.” Forcefully casual, Padraig’s voice still snaps with underlying tension. Sherlock raises an eyebrow, holding his hands out, palms up, as Padraig steps forward into the light. “Where, I wonder, might a young lord like yourself be wandering? It’s dangerous to be about after nightfall; didn’t anyone tell you?”

“I hadn’t noticed.” Sherlock rocks back on one heel, casual slouch disguising his readiness to move if needed. Padraig’s hand hasn’t strayed from the gun at his hip, and his flit-quick glance toward the stable door tells Sherlock there’s at least one other person inside, perhaps more. Only one reason for Padraig to come, with backup, on such a night: he’s somehow found out about Sherlock’s earlier activities. 

“You should watch yourself, Lord Holmes,” Padraig sneers. Using his title: covering their prior association. The men accompanying him are therefore not local or are his superiors, or both. Unknown to Sherlock. 

“From whom? I’ve passed unmolested on these roads since I was a child. As well you know.” Padraig flinches, mouth thinning with irritation.

“Times have changed.”

Sherlock sighs theatrically. “Yes, yes, how dreadfully boring.”

“Boring? Bor—” Padraig shoves forward, drawing his pistol; before he can manoeuvre further, though, the door to the stables clatters open and another man steps out.

“Stand down, soldier.”

“But —”

“Stand down.” With a huff, Padraig takes a minute step back, barely out of arm’s reach, and allows the gun to slide back into its holster, though his hand lingers at his hip. “We’re just here for a chat. I’m sure the Lord Holmes won’t object to that.” Under the brim of his pulled-low cap, the CO’s eyes flicker up Sherlock, lip sneering almost imperceptibly. Sherlock rolls a shoulder back, tilts a hip, turning himself from Padraig’s casual, bored erstwhile friend into an aristocrat. 

“I’m not in the habit of _chatting_ with rebels in the middle of the night.”

“Only spying on them?” Sherlock blinks, then lifts one shoulder in an affected shrug. 

“Satisfying my curiosity.” 

“These aren’t matters which you should be curious about,” Padraig’s CO says. His hand hasn’t so much as strayed toward his weapon, and yet, Sherlock senses that he’s not a man who often relies on others to carry out his orders. Dirty-handed lot, the IRA; Mycroft would never approve. 

“Hasn’t Padraig told you? I’ve an interest in everything that happens in my domain.”

“Your domain?” The CO laughs, chin jerking up as the sound rattles, harsh and short. “Your people may have given themselves airs and false titles, but this land is not — and has never been — your domain.” 

“Ah, yes, I’d forgotten. You’d like to return the land to half-wit peasants and sheep-fucking farmers. It matters little to me; my interests lie elsewhere.”

He doesn’t rise to the insult, but instead fires back, “Your frequent _liaisons_ with the RIC suggest otherwise.”

A beat. _Liaisons_ — had he seen — no. No, he only means Sherlock’s professional association and casework. Surely. “Expediency.” Sherlock bites, simply, and the CO snorts.

“I’m sure. If it’s expediency you favour, let me proceed more directly. Don’t let me catch you, or hear of you, so much as breathing near one of my men again. Ever.”

“Or else?” Sherlock’s lip curls into a snarl, and in his quick glance to Padraig he doesn’t catch quickly enough the rise of the CO’s hand before the barrel of his pistol is smashing across Sherlock’s cheekbone. 

Stumbling back, Sherlock cups a hand over his cheek. Wet — stinging — and from behind, Padraig’s fist comes heavy down on his kidneys, throwing him forward into the CO’s hands. Knee to his groin — he swings wildly, elbow cracking Padraig’s nose — something hard and heavy into his temple — and he falls, knees smashing into the dirt, hands scrambling at feet that move too quickly. Another kick to his back then quiet. 

“There’s no _or else_ , you dirty English traitor. This is all the warning you’ll receive.” His laugh, too harsh, too short, sounds again as Sherlock struggles to push himself up. Their footsteps have already receded by the time Sherlock is on his feet. 

The stairs are agony, sharpness splitting his back with each step, but he makes it to the settee finally, letting his body down with ginger care. On his side, face curled into the cushions, hands balled into fists against the throbbing of his blood in his back, his thigh, his head, he forces himself to think.

No mention of John, not directly. Either they didn’t know he was there, too, tonight, or didn’t consider Sherlock’s — association — with the RIC to be more personal than informing. That is fine; preferable. But also indicates that they hadn’t been seen; Padraig and his CO had found out from another source. One of his Irregulars, maybe? None of them were allowed enough information to piece together Sherlock’s intentions, but they were also only children. Prone to mistakes. _Stupid, Sherlock. Don’t be such a child._ Gritting his teeth, forcing the unwanted voice away. A runner, perhaps, noticing an intercepted message. A lucky guess. A suspicion; a guilty conscience. They hadn’t appeared to have enough information to warrant worrying about a direct informer, but if his movements hadn’t been watched, they likely would be now. He smiles, grimly; the movement starts up a thick oozing of blood from the cut on his cheek, which he ignores. The stakes have been raised.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[British in Ireland (1916-1920)](http://youtu.be/iOw60j7y0_c)**
> 
> **1\. After the Fenian’s rose up, back in ‘67.** A fairly poorly-organised and ultimately unsuccessful uprising by the Irish Republican Brotherhood, precursor to the IRA. There were scattered risings in Cork, Kerry, Limerick, and Dublin, which were flouted largely due to the effective use and positioning of informers by the British government. Around the same time there were a number of raids by Irish-American Civil War veterans in the Fenian Brotherhood, the IRB’s American arm, on British government and military posts in Canada, which also failed. With each successive rising after the United Irishmen rebellion in 1798, a fairly bloody series of engagements ending in an estimated 10,000 deaths across the island, rebel action seemed to be met with a mix of derision at their failures and fear of a repeat of ‘98.
> 
> **2\. Casement’s trial.** There is A LOT to be said about Roger Casement, but I’ll limit it to those this most likely to have caught Sherlock’s eye at the time. A consul for the British government, Casement spent the Boer War and the time shortly after investigating atrocities perpetrated by British forces and plantation owners which, ultimately, led him to the Irish Republican cause. In the lead-up to the Rising, Casement was instrumental in procuring arms from Germany, including helping to orchestrate the Howth gun-running in 1914, which supplied a critical number of arms (along with a number of other kick-ass folks, including, on the boat from Germany to Ireland, three women who made up the majority of their five-person crew). He negotiated an agreement with Germany that, if the war brought Germany to Ireland, they would not arrive as a conquering army, and managed to secure another cache of arms to be sent just before the Rising. The guns, however, never made it, and Casement was arrested for treason and sent to the Tower of London upon his arrival in Dublin, three days before the Rising. He was convicted of treason and sentenced to death. A number of people, including Arthur Conan Doyle, pleaded clemency against the death sentence, but Casement was executed on 3 August 1916. 
> 
> Something that no doubt would have had an impact on Sherlock at the age of 16 were the Black Diaries, secret diaries written by Casement (confirmed, now, though their authenticity was in question for much of the twentieth century) detailing homosexual liaisons with young men and handed over to Scotland Yard after his capture. Photographic copies of pages were circulated by the British government in a (somewhat successful) attempt to dissuade support of Casement amongst those asking for clemency rather than execution. 
> 
> **3\. One a CO, by his peaked cap.** For the most part, the IRA did not have uniforms for the rank-and-file men of the flying columns, who often wore their ordinary wool suits and their own hats, often flat caps or fedora-style hats, with Sam Browne belts or bandoleers, their collars or hats sometimes marked by badges with IRA insignia. Officers trained in Dublin, however, did wear a basic uniform, including a peaked cap. In this photo of a flying column from the Tipperary Brigade, you can see the Commanding Officer, Sean Hogan, in the peaked cap, second from the left in the back row.


	18. The O'Briens

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I want to take the time for a brief note of warning: from this chapter forward, expect graphic and sometimes unsettling depictions of violence. I'm going to take a moment to reiterate the warning posted at the beginning of the story, as well, as the warning regarding violence and death of minors has bearing on this chapter. Finally, the chapter photo contained within does depict, at a distance, the bodies of dead individuals. 
> 
> This story, as a whole, will contain graphic depictions of violence and death in the context of wartime, some of which will be outside of the realm of generally accepted wartime tactics and some of which will involve young adults and older children both combatant and non-combatant. I'll try to give a heads-up on individual chapters, but if you have any concerns about specific content before reading, please do feel free to get in touch with me in the comments or privately ([tumblr](http://lbmisscharlie.tumblr.com/ask) or [email](mailto:lbmisscharlie@gmail.com)) and I will do my best to answer!

“Escape! — Escape!” The sound jerks John out of sleep; he’s seated and reaching for his Webley before his eyes open. An alarum rings: the heavy, ancient iron bell at the lintel put to use finally. Outside the window, the electric search-light flickers, then flares into being. Installed as an anti-ambush tool, the massive light’s inaugural use streams across the scrub fields behind the barracks.

The glare reflects and fractures across the window glass as the search light stutters and jumps, its operator’s hands shaky and uncertain, but in the glancing light John can see two dark figures shoving through the overgrown field. Hughes, at his elbow, shoves a rifle into his hands. 

John jerks the sash window open, taking a moment to seek out his targets before raising the Lee-Enfield to rest on the sill. The O’Brien boys run, straight and true, their shadows stretching and jumping in the jerky movements of the search-light; Ned follows his younger brother by a stride, urging him on. 

Dropping to his knees, John sights along the barrel. He’ll need to take his shot soon; he’s all too aware that the Lee-Enfield loses accuracy rapidly at a distance. Beside him, Hughes is silent, still. 

A breath — his finger pulls — 

The younger boy jags sideways, splitting off from his trajectory to the right, and for a moment, John thinks — he’s missed, he’s startled him, and tucks his chin down again and — the boy falls, like stumbling, and doesn’t rise again. John lifts his cheek away from the butt of the gun; he can just see Ned O’Brien fall to his knees as well, no crack of gunshot needed. Someone’s hand claps John on the shoulder. Footsteps clatter down the stairs.

Outside, John joins the constables who run across the brush, a disorderly mass, each eager for the arrest. Their uniforms are a jumble, half the men partially in bedclothes still. He reaches the spot where the brothers have fallen: Ned on his knees with one constable roughly cuffing his wrists, and Danny a splayed, broken body beside him. 

Danny breathes still, but barely. Blood splutters and coughs from his lungs, his shattered chest splatter-painted crimson. His breathing is loud — deafening — wetly rattling the cold night air. Ned’s voice breaks above it, sobbing, saying his brother’s name, over and over and over – “Danny, no, Danny, don’t, Danny, don’t cry, don’t, Danny, I love ye, it’ll all be alright –” and John thinks of his sister – “Harry, don’t cry, he doesn’t mean it, Harry, he doesn’t mean to hurt you –” and stumbles forward, falling heavily to the ground beside Danny and pressing his hands, fisted, against the gaping, ragged crimson of the wound.

He hadn’t — he’d dashed right, Danny had, instead of continuing straight, and over a long distance, that precise a shot, but — But John had not been aiming to kill.

And yet — and yet, the boy’s blood pours over his fingers, sticky, and his brother keens — “Danny, no, Danny —” and with Ned restrained, the other constables stand still and quiet, waiting John’s pronouncement. 

Blood pulses wetly — weakly — between his fingertips, and his shoulder aches. He thinks _hold on, hold_ even while he knows his prayers, his pleading, are futile. He isn’t a doctor, he’s just a — a soldier, just a soldier with his hands desperate, clutching, in someone’s viscera again; useless. Danny’s chest no longer rises. 

John lifts his hands away when he no longer feels movement beneath them, holding them stiffly away from his sloppily-dressed uniform. “He’s dead,” he says, to the crowd, to no one; his eyes just catch Danielson’s, whose mouth is hard-set, who doesn’t nod at his pronouncement but takes two striding steps forward. 

“Get him inside,” Danielson says, and it takes John a moment to realise that the Sergeant isn’t talking about him, but to — to Finnegan, in fact, who stands behind Ned O’Brien, his hands clutching at the air like he doesn’t know what to do with him. He doesn’t, clearly: fear startles his face, his eyes very wide in the glare of the searchlight. Ned has crumpled over, shoulder against the ground and forehead resting in the mud, his gasping sobs still audible, wet and slick in the heavy air. “Come on, son,” Danielson says again, firmly but with less heat, and Finnegan leans down to pull Ned to standing. Ned’s body sags against him. 

John reaches to help, but the light catches against his blood-filled hands and he thinks better of it, pulling away, and instead steps back to Danny’s body, reaching with three other men to heft him up, lift him to their shoulders, and begin the trudging walk back to the barracks.

++

The body is sent to Hooper’s, the official report that he was shot trying to escape. It’s true, certainly, but feels too plain, too small: four words only for John’s gun at his shoulder, for the jagged right turn, for Ned’s voice, broken. Hughes, sensing his conflict, reassures him of his duties — “They couldn’t escape, Watson —” but John feels it roil inside him, nonetheless. 

Ned they keep in the cell, lock fortified and each man taking guard duty after a stern bollocking from Danielson, irate at the slip in attention that allowed the escape. “Don’t bloody forget,” he said, looking at them each in turn, “that little Ned and little Danny are only small, and they have a pile of brothers no doubt biding their time.”

He’d slammed his hand against his desk, looking at John. “This was a fuck-up,” he said, and John stared straight back at him. “A fuck-up of serious proportions. If Ned gets so much as a single fingernail outside of that cell, you’ll each have me to answer for.” John had nodded, sharply, and Danielson gritted his teeth. “And you’ll have the rest of the O’Brien brothers to answer to, soon enough,” he’d said, the quietness of his voice somehow more chilling than his earlier rage. 

How they’d escaped is clear enough: the constable on sentry duty lax and cock-sure, walking too close to the grated door of the cell; the bars were too tight for a grown man’s hand, but little Danny’s, quick and sure, filched the keys off right away. After that, they had only to wait for a distracted turn. The cells, built decades ago for little more than sobering up belligerents, proved little obstacle to nimble hands. 

John volunteers to represent the division when Danny’s mother claims the body. Danielson peers at him, long and hard, before jerking his chin in acquiescence and turning back to his paperwork. A flush of embarrassment floods John’s gut at the dismissal, but he swallows against it. 

++

Molly can hardly meet his eye. Danny’s body fills a scant half of the autopsy table, neatly cleaned and covered in a cloth under which the narrow rises of his limbs, the hollow of his skinny chest, nearly disappear. His face is pale, skin a grey shadow; John is no stranger to the pallor of death, to the division of a life ended and blood drained showing in waxy and sunken flesh, but on Danny’s small, childish face it unsettles. 

Metal clatters, startling John, as Molly drops instruments into her washing bowl. “He didn’t deserve this,” she says, to her wet hands. 

“No,” John agrees. Danny’s lids aren’t quite shut, his mouth narrowly open; he seems about to take a breath, to flicker his gaze up to the ceiling. “No,” John says again. He hears the shift of metal clinking together as Molly shifts the bowl, the thud as she leaves it on the table. She dries her hands; they don’t make eye contact as she comes to stand next to him. 

“You’re a bastard,” she says, quietly. She does know, then. John exhales; Molly’s hands wring the towel into a tight rope. “You’re a —” She cuts off her words with a gulping gasp, and only then does he chance a look. Eyes hardened and settled, mouth set; a determined stare where in some there might be tears. He won’t ask how well she knows them, the O’Briens. 

The knock at the door stutters, uncertainly, at first, then settles on one firm rap. Molly passes behind John, careful distance between them, to pull it open. Framed by the flame glow of the early morning sun, the woman in the doorway has the same slight frame as her dead son, slim straight shoulders and narrow ribs. As she steps forward, her gaze holds steady on the table in the centre of the room; grey eyes and sun-reddened cheeks in a thin face, set and dull. 

She reaches one hand to settle on the end of the table, a foot and a half still from the sheet-covered form of her son. Next to her Molly hovers, hands clenching futilely at the air until Mrs O’Brien looks up, finally, and touches Molly’s elbow, as though she’s the one to give comfort. 

“I’m so —” Molly starts, but Mrs O’Brien interrupts her with a sharp, curt, “Yes.” Not looking at John, she adds coolly, “I’ve brung the cart. Please take him to it.”

John gathers Danny up in his arms, his weight expectedly slight and stiff in death. As he passes through the door, Danny’s hand slips from under the sheet pathetically, reaching for the ground with a slack, careless gesture. Once he has laid the body into the rear of the cart, John reaches to arrange his limbs, but Mrs O’Brien grabs his hand with a sudden, sparrow-sharp grip, and he jerks back. 

“You’ll have yours,” she says in a dull, low voice before releasing him. He steps back, not letting himself stagger, and she climbs into the cart and flicks the reins at the horse with a careless, worn jerk of her wrist. She hadn’t looked at John once; somehow this disturbs more than the rage he’d expected.

He follows Molly back inside, but stands futilely as she briskly begins to clean the autopsy table, scrubbing its already-clear surface with long, angry strokes. She doesn’t speak; he shifts his weight and the floorboards creak loudly. 

“They have four older brothers,” Molly says, just as John finally turns to the door.

“Yes.” His hand hovers on the doorknob. Warm, where Mrs O’Brien’s hand had touched it. 

“Are you afraid?” Her voice doesn’t quaver; frankly honest, she sounds in search of understanding.

John inhales, considering. His empty hand clenches, then is still. “I should be,” he says, and turns the knob.

++

Sleep does not come easily in the forthcoming nights. The harsh, pleading sobs of Ned O’Brien fall over Sherlock’s voice on John’s name, over the crack of gunshot and the peal of thunder, the metallic clatter of a Crossley and the whisper of Sherlock’s skin against his, the cacophony a constant companion to his half-sleep until John keeps himself awake, eyes wide on the ceiling. After a long five nights of restlessness, John’s body aches. 

A creak sounds downstairs, then nothing. John would put it off to someone up in the night for a piss, but for the way it’s stifled, half-sounded, like the treading of a foot on the floorboards was interrupted. He slows his breath and listens; around him, the snuffling snores of O’Toole, Finnegan, and Hughes play a chorus, but no noise creeps below it. John sighs and relaxes, and is shifting to find a comfortable hollow in the too-stiff mattress when the door slams open.

It swings wide, wood around the lock splintered; one piece lands, skittering, on the floor below John’s bed, hitting his foot as he swings himself out. He’s up and armed before the door ricochets but it’s not enough, not by half, as they’re already firing, the men in the door. There are two that he can see, and their shots flare up in the dark.

John drops to a crouch, kicking his bed over to use the frame as a barricade, and shoots above it. He hears a muted cry from the doorway, but any triumph is subdued by the answering gasp from the bed beside him. “O’Toole,” he shouts — “Liam! Liam! —” but there’s no answer, so he lifts his hand above the bed to shoot again; one of the rebels fires, the shot glancing off the metal frame. He feels a hot, sharp pain in his forearm and drops down under their fire; the bullet had splintered the bedframe into shrapnel and a shard is embedded in his arm. 

The firing stops for a moment, and one of the men says, “You killed our brother. You’re traitors and scum and deserve no less than —” His words cut off as John’s bullet catches him in the forehead. Before the body can fall, John takes aim again and the second man is dead, too. He pauses, listens for more, and hears the clang of the iron barricades on the armoury door downstairs. It’s little more than a broom cupboard, really, but it holds their whole store of ammunition, as well as grenades, additional sidearms, the Lee Enfields they use on patrol, and the few Lewis guns their regiment has charge of. 

John hears a groan to his right. Finnegan struggles to raise himself off the floor, and in the pale light John can see the pool of blood growing under his ribcage. He shuffles over and stills Finnegan’s movements, trying to assess the damage. The wound is through his left side, but below the lung, John’s fairly certain, and the bleeding is extensive but slow. John grabs a pillow off the bed and presses it to Finnegan’s side. “Hold here,” he says, placing the boy’s hands. “Hold tight, keep the pressure on. I’ll come back.” Finnegan make a stifled noise of protest, and John presses his hands back on top of the pillow and picks up his gun and stands. 

In the broken darkness, his eyes catch Hughes crouching next to O’Toole’s bed. He shakes his head, and John’s jaw tightens. 

He’s only one round remaining, so he leans down to take up Finnegan’s weapon as well, then, with slight hesitation, rounds to O’Toole’s bed and takes the revolver from under his mattress as well. Hughes holds up his own sidearm and a handful of bullets, silently, and John nods. John tries, unsuccessfully, not to look at O’Toole, who sprawls across the bed, half of his face a bloody pulp. Both Finnegan and O’Toole have full cylinders, and John mutters a curse for their RIC training. 

He jerks his head toward the door and Hughes follows. Out on the landing, he can hear more clearly the men on the ground floor as they shuffle the stores out of the small cupboard. John and Hughes crouch at the head of the stairs, looking through the posts of the banister. Two men only, one pulling out boxes and the other hauling them outside. Levelling Finnegan’s Webley, John waits until the second steps back inside; the man laughs and makes a joke John half-hears, then turns. John’s shot goes as soon as the man is broadside, and it hits deep in the shoulder, through the heart from behind. The other man turns and scrambles for his gun but John’s bullet hits his knee and he wavers, for a long moment, then crashes down, cursing, and Hughes follows with a clean shot to his head. 

The rear door opens, Sergeant Danielson elbowing his way in, rifle held aloft. “What the flying bloody fuck is going on?”

John clears his throat. “All under control, sir.” Danielson ducks his shoulders, looking up the stairs to spot John. He opens his mouth to say something, then snaps it shut. His hair is in disarray, uniform jacket pulled on haphazardly over his pyjamas. John laughs; to his own ears the sounds is maniacal, broken, but Hughes stands and helps haul him up, chuckling himself.

“Gave them a bit of a shock, didn’t we? Up the Tans!” he shouts, triumphant, and John answers with a weak smile. 

Danielson looks at both of them, stone-faced. “Clean up this fucking mess.” His gesture encompasses the bodies of the two rebels, which slump together on the floor. “Where the hell are Finnegan and O’Toole?”

John takes a shuddering breath. “Upstairs, sir. O’Toole’s —” What is O’Toole? Dead? Murdered? Martyred? A coward, a child, a soldier. “O’Toole’s dead, sir,” he says finally, his voice as steady as his breath will allow. “Finnegan’s — I’m not sure.” Danielson cows at that; the tip of his rifle droops. 

“Dead? Jesus. Jesus feck.” He crosses himself, the first John’s seen of religion in his actions beyond his habitual church-going, and takes a steadying breath before ascending the stairs. His gaze sweeps over John and Hughes appraisingly before he passes them to see to Finnegan. 

Their shots were clean; still, the blood paints the walls behind the men, a crimson slash across the door. Their bodies lay akimbo, limbs limp and pathetic. The stench of death — blood, bile, feces — sours the air. 

The men felled outside the armoury cupboard wear masks, but, as Sherlock said, there were six total O’Brien boys, Danny killed and Ned still in the cells, and with four dead here, it’s not difficult to suppose their identity. His throat aches, thinking of Mrs O’Brien’s empty cottage, of the barn where they had found the arms crumbling into disuse with no one but the slight, grim-faced woman to tend it. He pulls the mask off the nearest; Hughes glances up from where he’s patting the other body down for weapons and raises an eyebrow, but John shakes his head and stares down at the man, knees wet with pooled blood. Even in the shocked mask of death, the man under his hands has the same puggish nose as Danny, and Ned’s square jaw. 

“Watson!” Danielson’s voice sounds down the stairs; John calls back — “Sir?”

“You said Finnegan was —” The sharp wrenching crack of gunfire interrupts; John stumbles to his feet, thundering down the steps to the cells, Hughes on his heels and Danielson’s heavy footsteps sounding above them. The familiar weight of his Webley balances John as he skids down the steps and rounds the corner, aiming into the blind darkness. Another two shots come, quick in succession, as he stumbles into the room.

“Finnegan!” He can just hear a wet, hitching breath in response as he fumbles against the wall for the switch to the electric light. “Finnegan, talk to me —” The light flickers once, then goes dark; John curses and slams the switch with his hand, which brings it, unexpectedly, to life, the glare blinking-harsh and sharp. 

John sees Finnegan first: he’s still on his feet, gun held aloft but wavering. The other hand clutches at his stomach, where his blood spreads, dripping slowly through his grasping fingers. He looks at John, eyes hazy, unfocused, and the gun drops from his drooping hand.

“Killed trying to escape,” he says, tonelessly. One foot scrapes heavily against the floor as he takes an unsteady step back and drags his gaze back to the cell. The door gapes open. 

John shakes his head; behind him he can just hear Hughes inhale sharply. “Finnegan, you —” Finnegan looks at John, eyes sluggish, hazy, then away; John takes the two needed steps to see into the cell, where, crumpled in the corner, Ned O’Brien’s body lies, very still. Danielson, thundering down the stairs, shoulders them both out of the way. He holds his revolver, too, though his grip is too-tight on the butt, ill-accustomed to it, and over his shoulder he’s slung a rifle. 

“Jesus.” Danielson’s voice is more a whistled exhale, the curse shocked, unbelieving. 

“O’Toole —” Finnegan starts to say, weakly, as Hughes turns and gently works the gun from his hand. 

“Yes, lad,” Hughes says, helping Finnegan to the ground and prodding, gingerly, at the wound in his side. John leans down, and Hughes makes room for him to inspect it. The bleeding has slowed to a weak, sluggish trickle, and it looks like the bullet went through, taking with it a chunk of Finnegan’s side but not much else. He’s still in his pyjamas; when he looks up at John, his eyes are the colour of the faded blue stripes, and young — so young. 

“You’ll live,” John says, shortly, and Finnegan nods and says, “Sir.” John’s hand clenches, fists the air, and he forces himself to his feet.

Danielson looks at Hughes, then at John; for one startling moment his eyes are unfocused, lost, then he snaps back to himself — visibly tightening, shoulders straight and jaw rough — and says, “Long night ahead.” He leads them back upstairs, where the rest of the barracks waits — on Danielson’s orders, no doubt, and John is, briefly, thankful. They don’t need more heedless words or reckless actions. Mrs Danielson stands in the corner, clenching tight to the collar of her dressing gown, hands under her chin; O’Leary stands just in front of her, shoulder nearly blocking her from view, and murmurs something over his shoulder that makes her take a deep breath, grip loosening just a bit.

Putting three extra men on sentry duty, Danielson directs another to the doctor, leaving John and Hughes to clean up, which — given the blood that smears, sticky and stinking, across John’s hands and shirt already, and given how little any of them would like the events of the night to be spun out, into a boasting pub tale by some constable bitter to be left out of the action — seems sensible.

Between them, John and Hughes carry all five bodies to the courtyard. Danielson stays upstairs a long time, boards creaking intermittently under his feet and his wife bringing pitchers of clean water up and a crimson-soaked bowl of bloody rags down on each trip, and by silent consent none of the constables interrupt. It’s the first death in their division, perhaps the first Danielson has seen under his command.

Hughes sets the armoury to rights while John hauls in a bucket of water and a rough scrub-brush, kneeling to clean the blood from the floor. It seeps between the wooden planks, leaving a dark stain that will haunt the barracks evermore. John scrubs, and scrubs, and merely nods his head tightly at Hughes’s admonition to put it away and get some sleep.

“I’ll finish this, first,” John says, though his fingertips are white and sore and the smell of lye soap fills his nostril. He scrubs until Danielson lays a hand on his shoulder and tells him to stop and even then he still feels the blood under his knees, but he stands and leaves it. He doesn’t sleep; instead he puts on his uniform and sits, stock still, in the parlour, and waits for morning light to break.

++

The sun creeps slowly above the horizon and over the windowsill, painting itself in broad streaks across the tips of John’s boots, up the creases in his trousers. In the hallway, the stomp and shuffle of boots sound as guard duty changes. Hughes ducks his head into the parlour and opens his mouth to speak, then shakes his head. His tunic is still unbuttoned at the neck, trousers creased and bloody at the knees; too keyed-up to sleep, he’d volunteered for early morning shift, and now his eyes have the red-cornered, watery look of someone over-exhausted. O’Toole’s body is laid out in their room, anyway; not much rest to be had beside his rigour-stiffened sleep. 

“Are you on next?” Hughes says, finally, and John nods. Danielson hadn’t wanted to assign him, clearly wrestling with the desire to send him to bed like an unruly child, but John had stood at attention and stared at the wall above Danielson’s head until he’d sighed, weary and disgusted, and set him to the first daytime shift. Shoving out of the armchair, John tugs on his cuffs, straightens his Sam Browne, and begins his shift.

The watery red of the early sun fades to weak grey as clouds rumble in; by the final hour of John’s shift, rain has his feet puckered in their boots, and a cold, steady trickle runs down his neck. In all five hours, no one passes but an elderly woman, her feet shuffling a tune down the grit of the road long after she’s turned the corner; five mop-headed children who pass with the hushed, excited silence of completing a daring, forbidden act; and a young woman who pulls her hat down low, looking startled to find herself in front of the barracks. No doubt word of the night’s activities has spread, then; John only wonders if the rest of the town stays away out of fear, anger, or some more sinister design. 

A full circuit around the barracks and yard takes seven or eight minutes; John refuses to count his steps, to allow it to feel routine. He’s seen plenty of deaths from such complacency: a helmet left off because the artillery never began before half five; a dash through the trenches, completed a hundred times, a thousand times before, cut short by a shell. His mind, too, he resolutely does not allow to wander. Not to the pull of the rifle in his hands, to the veering trail of Danny’s feet, to the wet gurgle of O’Toole’s last inhale. 

Instead, he scans the near-empty town, listens for unexpected footfalls, and watches the quavering shadows of lazy, wind-blown scrub grass. All his senses tune to his surroundings, though the wet squelches of his feet through the mud are the only sounds, his own shadow the only moving form.

Danielson himself comes out to relieve John. With their small cohort, they’ll be hard pressed to continue this level of duty, but the hard, narrow stare of the Sergeant’s eyes suggests little alternative. Though he knows food, then sleep, should be his priorities, John instead circles round to the yard and swings his leg over a bicycle.

The roads are pitted with muddy puddles, leaving John’s boots and trousers caked and his pedalling stiff. At the back of the house, his tyres skid on the sodden gravel; he catches himself, ungainly, with his bad leg, and curses as the knee gives. On the ground, tangled in the bicycle, with gravel working its sharp edges into his shin, he suddenly feels the sour-sharp taste of frustration, of helpless anger, and he swallows against the rising bile and kicks the bicycle away from him.

Looming above him, the windows of Sherlock’s laboratory glow pale with interior light, but no figure appears to investigate John’s scuffling, cursing fracas. The door shoves open with a satisfying crack against the wall, and his feet clamour against the ladder rungs. The trapdoor he lets clatter against the floor as he shoves through, abstractly pleased with the sound of wood against wood, hollow and echoing. He climbs into the loft to see Sherlock bent over an array of small glass dishes, patently ignoring his cacophonous entrance. John kicks the trapdoor closed. 

“Do attempt to lighten your elephantine tread. This mould is particularly sensitive,” Sherlock says prissily, not looking up. John stomps a little harder. Sherlock’s hand lifts, held still in the air, a delicate glass pipette clasped daintily between two long fingers. “Oh,” he says, the word halfway between a disgusted groan and a scoff. “You’ve had a trying day and have chosen to take it out on me. I’m ever so glad the Empire is protected by such upstanding, mature examples of the citizenry.”

If he weren’t still three strides away, John would kick him. Or better yet, his chair legs from under him. “I have not had a _trying_ day,” he says, giving the word all the insignificant petty disgust it deserves. _Trying_ is for the minor frustrations of businessmen, for the tangled handiwork of dainty ladies, for children in infantile strops. 

Sherlock, finally, glances up. His eyes sweep over John; opening his fists, John holds his hands out from his sides, wryness twisting his lip as he presents himself for inspection. Sherlock’s eyes linger on his wrists, the wrinkled, stained knees of his trousers, the mud caked on his boots, but only glance over his face before averting. “Petty murder must put one in such a mood,” he says, finally, but it lacks his biting delivery and, when John looks at his turned-away face, it is pale. 

“Yes, well. Nearly getting killed has a way of taking the humour out of life.” John folds his hands back into their fists, resists bringing his heels together. Sherlock won’t look at him. 

“Your leg is bothering you,” Sherlock says instead of answering.

“It’s the damp,” John says, untruthfully. He doesn’t know why it gave out, other than a sheer bloody-minded tendency to be inconvenient. He takes a step closer; Sherlock sets the pipette down, finally, with delicacy, and settles his empty hands against the surface of the table. When John steps close enough to reach, to touch him, he presses himself up with a slight stiffness marring the grace of his long body.

“You’re injured.” Sherlock waves it off. 

“One forgets the necessities of human musculature when absorbed in an interesting task.”

“You mean you’ve been sitting for too long,” John says, and catches the flicker of nearly-fond annoyance crease the corner of Sherlock’s lip for just a moment. “Doesn’t explain that cut on your — on your cheek.” John lifts his fingers, but doesn’t reach to touch his face. Sherlock waves the question off.

He hasn’t yet asked why John is here. John isn’t certain if he would like him to, or to explain it himself, deduced from the blood on his uniform and the sleeplessness in his eyes, or if his hazy purposes are best left alone altogether; he isn’t sure what he’d say, to start. Between them, the off-footed silence stretches, stubbornness and resistance permeating the air. Sherlock half-turns toward him, enough that the sharp beak of his profile softens as the glancing light skitters across the rounded tip of his nose, the softness of his chin. John takes a step without knowing it, the silence between them growing smaller, meaner.

Grabbing the back of Sherlock’s neck, John brings their mouths together in a harsh clash; Sherlock’s teeth cut against his lips, their noses bump, and under his fingertips he feels all the resistance of Sherlock’s muscles, his tendons, the unyielding curve of his vertebra. Neither moves their mouths for a long moment, and John breathes harshly through his nose, and Sherlock’s jaw clenches before he kisses him savagely back. Harsh — biting — his mouth shoving against John’s until John rocks a step back, until John clutches at Sherlock’s braces to steady himself — Sherlock’s lips thin and dry and needy and John’s own mouth sour. 

John grapples: his lips clumsy, his hands fumbling, his feet off-balance, but he manages to wrench Sherlock’s shirt half-out of his trousers, to shove his braces down to the crooks of his elbows, to tear at the buttons of his flies. Sherlock groans into him as his hand shoves against sweat-damp drawers, against the rise of his cock, still mostly soft under John’s fumblings. 

“God, god,” John pants against Sherlock’s mouth as he pulls at the collar of John’s tunic. _Make me forget_ , he wants to say. _Make me something else._ Sherlock bites the corner of John’s mouth and John whines. He would have Sherlock pull bruises to his skin, to mark over the blood and the battle still on him. Would be left filthy and aching and forgetful. 

Clutching at Sherlock’s hip, John’s fingers dig, dig, seeking to bring bruises to the surface, and Sherlock sounds a weak, strangled groan and wrenches away. John’s hands grasp at air, his mouth suddenly chill, the twisted collar of his tunic tight against his neck. Sherlock pants, eyes wild at the edges.

“Why are you here?” he says, finally, and the words sound so unmoored that John’s hands clench. “You’ve — you’ve —” His eyes rove over John, again, in the wild-hungry search for detail, for clues, for the truth. “You’ve killed tonight; had some of your own killed. You — what do you want?” 

A grim, edged laugh cuts from John’s mouth. “What do I want? I should have thought that was — was obvious.” He doesn’t do anything so lewd as gesture between them, to the line of his own erection, to the wrenched-open waist of Sherlock’s trousers. 

“No,” Sherlock says, bursting into movement, shoving his hands through his hair. He half-turns away, hands still held to his head and clutching, and stares blankly out the window before lowering his arms, turning back calmly. 

“No. You’ve made it quite clear you don’t desire — this — in any more than an incidental way. So.” He pauses, daring John to contradict him, to say — to say — god. _Yes, I want it. Yet, I am a — an invert; a sodomite; a pervert. Yes._ He says nothing, but won’t look away either, holding Sherlock’s gaze.

“Do you seek absolution, John? Do you want forgiveness?” He spits his words, mocking and bitter. He makes the sign of the cross in the air between them, sloppy and fey. “There, you’re blessed, you’re forgiven. Go with god and murder some more.”

“Fuck’s sake, Sherlock —”

“What, then?” Sherlock nearly shouts. “What?” His mouth twists, an unhappy snarl. John clenches his fists; clenches his teeth. Sherlock’s eyes flick up — over — then he takes a half-step back, cruel grin spreading. “Oh. Oh, I see. Not absolution, then. Debasement. Abjection. You’re indecent anyway, so you may as well.”

John’s jaw works; he can feel the butt of his gun brush against the inside of his arm, its phantom weight in his still-bloody hands. “I’m leaving,” he says, tightly, and kicks at the trapdoor with the toe of his boot until it flips open.

“Go,” Sherlock says, then shouts it again, to John’s curled back as he drops down, away, feet barely touching the ladder. His boots, still muddy, stick to the straw, and his tunic chafes at his neck, at his wrists, and all the heat of his gut roils and twists and sickens him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[Guerilla Warfare in Ireland (1922)](http://youtu.be/2IJBLESEUgY)**
> 
> **1\. Barracks ambushes and RIC retaliations** Needless to say, at times the IRA hit the RIC literally where they slept, and such attacks were rarely put down as quickly as John and Hughes managed. Leeson recounts an attack on the Roscarberry barracks by Tom Barry’s West Cork flying column thusly:
>
>> A fierce battle followed, as both sides fought at close range with rifles, revolvers, and hand grenades. The police were driven upstairs, and the guerrillas occupied the ground floor. The guerrillas fired up through the ceiling, set off more bombs trying to bring down the first floor, and set the barracks on fire. After five house the police finally surrendered.”
> 
> Still, the police emerged victorious in the overwhelming majority of cases, and the single Black and Tan lost in the Roscarberry attack was the only B&T killed in barracks throughout the war.
> 
> I’ve touched on RIC retaliations before, and will do in the next chapter as well, but it’s worth remembering the division between Irish RIC (like Finnegan), who were often caught between conflicting values or even family members on either side of the fight, and the B&Ts, for whom the war was in many ways less personal. General Nevil Macready, the British military commander in Ireland, was quoted in the RIC’s newspaper, the _Weekly Summary_ in late 1920 as saying:
>
>> Formerly, in Ireland, if a police officer were murdered there was no thought of direct reprisals by the RIC. They thought only of bringing the murderer to justice, confident that he would be dealt with quickly and adequately by the courts. But now, the machinery of law having been broken down, they feel there is no certain means of redress and punishment, and it is only human that they should act on their own initiative.
> 
> Thanks for sticking with me through that bloody, awful chapter. 


	19. The Hearing

The nervous, stuttering knocking sounds across the courtyard; when he rolls and cranes his neck, Sherlock can just see out the stables window and down the the servants’ entrance of the big house. The threshold is empty. Brow furrowing, Sherlock leans up on one elbow to see the ground — ah. Jumping from one foot to the other, rain dripping down his sodden cap and soaking his too-small jacket, Ruiri nervously looks up at the looming, dark house. The sun has barely risen; Maxwell must be lighting the fires in the front parlour and unable to hear Ruiri’s anaemic knock. With a sigh, Sherlock rolls off the settee to stomp to the window, which he cracks open enough to call out brusquely to the boy. Ruiri’s eyes, when he looks up, are wide and startled.

Popping his head through the trapdoor, Ruiri shoves a damp scrap of paper into Sherlock’s hand. Blurred with rain and crumpled by Ruiri’s small, sweaty palm, the note takes some deciphering. _Barracks — ambush. 6 dead._ Not just a scuffle, then. 

“How many RIC?”

Ruiri’s panting has slowed, but he still hiccoughs his breath as he answers. “Only one, sir. Your man —” He waves his hand in a frantic, heaven-ward gesture, and for one illogical moment Sherlock’s gut clenches. “From up north, Belfast-ways.” Clearly struggling to conjure the name, Ruiri frowns, but Sherlock waves him off. He’d known it wasn’t John, of course; he’s only just seen him. 

Still, though — swallowing down the bitter wash of saliva in his mouth, Sherlock asks, brusquely, if there is anything else. “There’ll be a — a hearing today, in town. That’s all I heard.” Dropping a half-crown into his palm, Sherlock waves Ruiri away and paces across the narrow loft. A hearing; they’re wasting little time. Eager to declare the RIC under no fault at all, no doubt. 

++

The hearing won’t start until midday, so Sherlock begins the morning by knocking at the door of Hooper’s mortuary. Receiving no response, he turns the knob; the door swings open and smacks against the back wall loudly. When his eyes adjust to the electric light, the first figure Sherlock makes out is not Molly’s, but the body laid on the autopsy table. Not yet covered by a sheet, the young man still wears his blood-stained clothes, a dark pool covering his chest. Below him, the metal surface of the table glints, lively in the glare of the light. Stepping into the room, Sherlock makes out a strange, ungainly heap on the wooden work bench along the back wall. Flickering over it, his eyes make out a hand — another — a boot — blood-matted hair — a sprawled arm — two bodies, in fact, pressed close together in disarray in order to fit on the table. 

He steps closer. The stench which fills his nose is of life as much as death: faeces and urine and blood. The two men, nearly entwined, recreate a primordial intimacy, bodies cupped together and limbs overreaching so that their borders meet with a fluid tenderness. The casual embrace of lovers or, indeed, of brothers. Twins, likely, going by the angle of their noses and the crook of their left thumbs, and curled together as though returned to the womb. The brother nearer Sherlock stares up, to the distance beyond, his eyes shockingly white and wide.

Except for O’Connor, he’s not seen a body before its ritual — medical — cleaning, before the blood has been wiped away and the eyelids lowered, the hair combed and the body washed. He’d wanted to: to see all the impurity of death, to know its secrets laid bare, before they are neatened and hidden away. This messy imprecision, this tangle of limbs, the harsh pallor under all the grime and blood and waste. To be the first to wash that away, to make knowable the logic of the body, to take the first clean cut into the fragile-skinned flesh of the sternum and peel away the outer layers hiding the glistening, slick, rich organs within. 

The door creaks open, accompanied by a great clatter as Molly drops the metal pan in her hands. “Jesus — Sherlock —” Her hands clutch at her chest, a gesture of anguish as much as shock, and her face is nearly as pale as the bodies on her slab. “Tell me what you want, quickly. I can’t — today —” Her sentences linger, finished as much by her hands, futilely grasping at the limp bodice of her shirtwaist, as the bodies awaiting her. 

“I’m busy,” she says, finally dropping her hands. She doesn’t look at him, but neither do her eyes fall on the bodies. 

“These aren’t all of them,” Sherlock says, gesturing to the three dead men. 

“No. Two more in a cart outside, and — and one still at the barracks. It’s not John,” she adds hastily, to his briefly raised eyebrow.

“I know it’s not John,” he answers, snappish. Molly flushes.

“I thought you might be worried.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Would he have been worried, if he hadn’t seen John? Worry is an unnecessary emotion; theorising ahead of the facts only leads to imprecise conclusions. Yet he had — 

He dismisses the thought and blinks, to find Molly looking at him, finally. The pink in her cheeks rises when his eyes fall on her, but she doesn’t look away. 

Finally, he pulls his gaze away to look more closely at the three bodies. The one laid out, with more care, is a few years younger, but shares the same sharp chin as the twins. “They all died in the ambush?” Molly nods. “No purpose looking for cause of death, then —” Bullets in the chest, bullets in the head, the twins more precisely managed than their younger brother, whose face is mangled, a gaping hole where the left lobe of his skull should be. 

“No,” Molly says with a deep sigh, leaning to clean up the pan of instruments she’d dropped. “Making them presentable for their mother.” She thrusts her chin out as she says it, as if daring Sherlock to comment on the futility of such a gesture. Standing, she drops the pan on the clear work table, shoving it to one side as she grasps the edge and leans against it. 

“A whole family,” she says, finally. “Margaret O’Brien has nothing left now — _nothing._ She’s standing wake for Danny already, did you know that? Your friend — your — your John.” She looks up at him; he could feign innocence, pretend not to understand, but he chooses not to hide his knowledge. She nods, biting hard enough to turn her lower lip pale. “Danny,” she says again, holding up one finger, then points to the young man on the table. “Ned,” two fingers, “Ciaran,” three, “Cahir,” four, “Aidrian and Darrick,” five and six, with a gesture to the courtyard behind her. One hand spread full and her pale, slim index finger held up, trembling slightly. 

“Everyone in this town knew those six names, since they were boys. Did you? Ciaran and Cahir were at school with me; you must remember them?” Sherlock doesn’t. “Danielson’s had all the older ones in the cells on some prank or another. But none of those men in barracks knew them, knew their names.”

“They chose to be involved in this war,” Sherlock says.

“And your man chose to shoot them. To shoot an unarmed boy in the back. He was only twelve, you know, Danny? He was just a boy.” 

“War seems to make little logical sense,” Sherlock says, aware of the weakness of his answer. 

Molly slams her hands down against the edge of the table with force enough to rend the air with a sharp crack. “I’ve had enough of the logic of war. I’ve had enough of the — of the —” She takes a great gasping sob, shoving ineffectually at the table; its bulk is unmoved by her slight form, no matter her anger. Her knuckles whiten. “I’m finished with being told how I can help,” she says, teeth gritted, looking down at the table still. Before Sherlock can respond, Molly straightens and takes a deep breath, turning to Ned, on the autopsy table. 

“Are you working or standing there being useless?” she snaps at Sherlock, who blinks and steps forward on instinct. “His boots, first, then his clothes,” Molly says with brisk efficiency. She begins unbuttoning the boy’s shirt, lifting his body enough to pull it off. Blood cakes the shoulder; she has to tug to peel it away from his skin, and she frowns at the stained garment for a moment before laying it aside, gently, and picking up a damp cloth to wipe away the blood on his face and neck. Glancing up at his immobile hands, she nods her chin toward his feet; Sherlock unties the swollen laces with some difficulty, removing the boots then the boy’s trousers so that Molly can sponge off the body.

The blood comes away with difficulty, but she continues with gentle, sure hands, as though the body beneath them were sleeping, only. His injuries are brutal, imprecise: one glancing shot to the upper shoulder, and at least two bullets to the side of the head. Not a clean kill. 

Molly finds two bullets in the skull, two small flattened disks. Revolver caliber, shot from a near distance, but not a steady hand. As Molly continues, Sherlock steps over to examine the other two brothers. A single bullet through the forehead for each, matching wounds on their twinned faces. Dead in seconds. Cold, precise.

Once Ned is washed, Sherlock helps Molly dress him again. With no time to clean his clothes, he wears his blood like a shroud. Once finished, they together move his body to the courtyard, where they lay it across a row of empty barrels, a tarpaulin shielding him from the rain. They move the next brother to the table and repeat, then the next, then the next, then the next. All four are laid in state in the back of a cart to await their mother and their final journey home, and the sun has risen to burn a hole in the clouds. It glares, weakly, not enough to bring the brilliance of life back to their flesh.

++

His shirtsleeves and front still damp, fingers still pruned, Sherlock takes his leave of Molly to attend the hearing. Aware that he has just had his hands on the evidence of the ambush, he holds in his mind the precision of five bullets, the sloppy anger of three. 

Macroom has nothing like a courthouse, nor a judge, but it matters little: no citizen in the county would answer a jury call, either from republican sentiment or fear of reprisals. By rumour, Sherlock knows that the Daìl courts have had success in some quarters, though the heavy Auxiliary presence in Macroom stops any notion of their presence in Cork. Sherlock would be surprised if a proper trial had been held anywhere in the county in months. 

Rather, in some semblance of due process, the concerned parties gather at Town Hall, where the ranking RIC officer oversees hearings related to the Constabulary’s deeds — and misdeeds. Town Hall, a square, grey-stoned building with the Union Flag stubbornly fluttering above the door, smells faintly of damp stone and floor wax. It broke ground with Sherlock’s birth, the two events unrelated but for their dates of inception, but its walls grew slowly, hindered by finances and strikes. Sherlock has a distant, early memory of watching workers stacking the heavy granite blocks. Unwittingly, his eyes seek out the westerly corner, where low down — a child’s height — two small indentations in the masonry bear evidence of his small, prying fingers. Once it was completed, the family had attended its dedication ceremony; Sherlock, in stiff knickerbockers, standing next to Mycroft’s poker-straight back and refusing to clutch his cool, clammy hand, had only been interested in the loud clanging of the bright brass bell, rung once precisely at noon that day, then left silent. He’d pulled at Father’s greatcoat, wishing to climb up his shoulders and onto the flagpole, where he was certain he’d be able to reach the bell after the rope had dropped off.

He glances up, pausing at the top of the stairs; the bell bears the greenish patina of age and disuse. No doubt some feel it adds gravitas to the young building. Resolutely dropping his eyes, he shoves the door open into the vestibule, where a crowd overflows from the council room, excited chatter amplified in the high-ceilinged room. By the time Sherlock elbows his way to the front of the room, Colonel Smyth has seated himself at the front table, making a show of shuffling paperwork while he waits for the crowd to settle. Standing at attention next to him, Danielson stares above the heads of the crowd, jaw tight, while Hughes manages to look bored even while standing straight and deferential. Next to him, John clenches his jaw and stares resolutely, blankly, forward. His eyes skitter over the crowd once, and Sherlock sees the way his gaze drags, only just, as he catches sight of Sherlock. After that, he pulls his shoulders even tighter, gaze directed somewhere above the rear door, the only movement of his body the barely-perceptible rise of his chest under his shined Sam Browne belt. 

Drawn to one side, Finnegan sits in a straight-backed chair, the effort to stay upright clearly evident in the pallor of his face and the drawn tautness of the tendons in his neck. Every few minutes his hand strays to press at his side, above where his gun nestles in its holster. Every lineament of his body telegraphs pain and uncertainty. 

Smyth barks an order to bring the room to attention, but the crowd, restive and angry, takes a few moments to settle. There are far too few chairs, so only a few ladies and elderly sit, surrounded on all sides by the people of the town young and old. The rear of the room is lined with a row of Auxies, their Lee Enfields held in sharp, precise diagonals. With the press of bodies comes the pungent reek of wet wool, the fecund ripeness of farm-trod boots, the acridity of nervous sweat. 

Growing impatient, Smyth slams a fist down on the table, which shudders under his force, its legs scratching audibly against the floor. “To _order,_ ” he growls, and the room quietens but for a few grumblings from the back corners. 

“Now,” he continues, hands folded together, all shows of paperwork-shuffling abandoned in favour of a sharp, authoritarian bearing. “We are here today to hear testimony related to the events occurring at the Macroom RIC barracks during the past week, in order to determine if any wrongdoing has, indeed, taken place. As the rebel combatants involved are now deceased —” Outraged cries flare across the room until Smyth pounds the table again. “Enough! I make these proceedings public as a gesture of good faith, but if I — if they continue to be interrupted, I’ll have you all out on the streets. 

“As I was saying, today we will hear the testimonies of Sergeant Danielson, commanding officer of the Macroom RIC division, Temporary Constable Watson, Temporary Constable Hughes, and Constable Finnegan. If, at the end of the proceedings, I determine that they have all acted within the rights and responsibilities as proscribed by the Constabulary, they will be free to continue in their duties without charge or reprimand. If that is not the case, appropriate charges will be laid and the offending parties will face trial in Dublin.”

Likely chance, Sherlock thought. Smyth has, so far, remarkably presented the illusion of a fair hearing, but with ambushes growing more and more frequent and fatal, capable men will not be dismissed from the Constabulary for anything but the most heinous crimes. 

Danielson begins, stepping forward and telling, in unaffected language, the events of the escape attempt by Danny and Ned. The guard’s mistake, the alarm called as the boys ran across the field, the shot from the barracks. Danielson didn’t glance at John as he detailed the moments; “I heard a single shot from behind me and saw the younger boy, Danny, fall. His brother stopped to see to him and we were able to apprehend him once more without struggle.”

“That shot was whose?” Smyth clarifies.

“Temporary Constable Watson’s. From an upper window at a distance of three hundred yards.” An appreciative hum passes over the crowd; even Smyth’s eyebrows flicker upward. 

“And the boy died immediately?”

“Within a few minutes. We sent a messenger to notify the mother, as he was still young and was being treated under the rights of a prisoner.” 

Behind him, Sherlock hears a man murmur, “Fat lot of good that did him.” Sherlock is inclined to agree; the morality of combat seems yet unknowable: when an unarmed man may be killed and when he may not, for example, seems a remarkably slippery boundary. 

“To continue: please detail the events of yesterday evening.”

Despite himself, Sherlock leans forward. There had only been so much to read in the disarray of John’s uniform, in the evidence on the bodies of the O’Brien brothers. Danielson clears his throat before beginning, his unblinking stare still holding fast to the rear of the room. 

“I was not present for the bulk of the action; I awoke to the sound of gunshots. When I arrived in the front hall, Temporary Constables Watson and Hughes were on the stairway landing and two bodies were on the hall floor, two more at the doorway of their bunks.”

“The eldest brothers?” Here, Smyth does consult his paperwork, and Molly’s words return to Sherlock — _none of those men in barracks knew their names._ “Darrick, Aidrian, Cahir, and Ciaran,” he says finally.

Danielson nods. “They were identified later, yes. When I arrived, I was informed that Constables O’Toole and Finnegan had been shot and remained upstairs. O’Toole was still in bed. Dead. Four shots, it would turn out to be.” He licks his lips; Sherlock can just make out the tightening of his fist.

“And Finnegan?”

“Not there. I stepped out to question Hughes and Watson again, at which time we heard a shot.” The crowd shifts nervously, angrily, around Sherlock, as Danielson continues. The shots — the open door — Ned’s body on the stairs and Finnegan’s injury. Once Danielson is dismissed, Smyth calls for John, who steps forward. Once more, his gaze skates over the crowd to catch Sherlock’s eye, but it lingers, a long moment, before he blinks and glances back to Smyth, who asks him to describe the events of a week hence. 

“Did you aim to kill?” John’s jaw tightens, his fingers flex. 

“I aimed to hit him, sir, and over that distance —”

“Yes,” Smyth interrupts. “Three hundred yards. Impressive, especially for a man who displayed middling target scores during training.” He gestures down at the paperwork in front of him: John’s file, no doubt. John shifts his weight from one foot to the other. “Watson?”

“Was there a question, sir?” A slight titter washes through the crowd, and Smyth frowns minutely. 

“Can you explain your ability to take down a moving target — a small target, I might add —” Sherlock isn’t imaging the cruel twist to his lip — “at a distance of four hundred yards when you have demonstrated little such ability in the past?”

“I was a fair shot in the Army,” John says; by his stillness and the tiny twitch of his lip, Sherlock suspects that _fair_ is a gross understatement. 

“What happened?”

“I got shot.” John imbues the three words with such a dry, unimpressed candour that Sherlock cannot help the laugh that barks from his throat. Smyth’s eyes swivel in his direction, but he blanks his expression, transforming it to bland and mildly attentive. John doesn’t look toward him. 

“And on the night of the escape attempt? The ability simply returned?”

“I suppose I remembered how.” Curious, that. An ability to shoot that manifests itself under the most needful pressure, just like a false leg injury that only appears at intervals of boredom.

“Fine,” Smyth says, clear annoyance in his voice. He believes John lies: either that the shot was lucky, a chance hit, or that he deliberately disguised his abilities during training. The second, Sherlock suspects, would, if true, be much more dangerous to John’s career. Smyth is the sort of man who wrings every bit of soldierly ability from his men, discontent with lacklustre performance and kept secrets alike. “Yesterday.”

With calm precision, John lays out just how the O’Briens had attacked: two upstairs, firing as the constables slept; how he woke and fired back; leaving O’Toole and Finnegan to proceed to the landing with Hughes; taking down the other two men. Sherlock matches his words up with the injuries he’d seen: one to the heart, one to the knee for Aidrian and Darrick — which must leave the head shot to Hughes — and two clean bullets through two clean foreheads for the twins.

“At this point,” John continues, his jaw tightening slightly, “we heard a gunshot coming from the basement. As I took the stairs another two sounded.” He pauses, licks his lips. His gaze skitters toward Sherlock but then, just as quickly, away. “At the foot of the stairs was Ned O’Brien’s body. Shot trying to escape.” He says no more and, after a pause, Smyth dismisses him.

Hughes corroborates John’s testimony, though with perhaps more bravado than necessary; as he speaks the men behind Sherlock shift tensely and murmur, too low for Sherlock to make anything out. Finnegan, called next, answers each question put to him with only the shortest, most matter-of-fact sentences. He had heard a noise in the basement; the door was already open when he arrived; Ned was shot trying to escape. Never mind the two storeys between the bunks and the cells; never mind the close-range shots, fired head-on, nothing at all like a man shot while moving, while running away. 

Smyth considers their words for only a minute or two before speaking. “When under attack, the Constabulary is empowered to use fatal force against rebel combatants. In such cases, innocents may be killed. Such is the price of peace. However, I find that in the events of this week, the Constabulary acted well within their rights and responsibilities in apprehending and terminating escaping prisoners and in responding in kind when attacked. No wrongdoing has occurred and all officers involved are thus requested by the Crown to continue their valuable service in the name of the Empire.” In the absence of a gavel, he pounds the table one final time, rising to the crowing protests of the assembled crowd who, upon his words, surge forward.

Sherlock stumbles, pressed by the men behind him, to come face-to-face with John’s rifle as he brandishes it against the crowd. “Keep back,” he shouts, tearing his gaze from Sherlock. Hughes and Danielson have their weapons similarly drawn, and as they advance against the upset crowd, the people nearest Sherlock resist, pushing forward. Lifting the butt of his rifle, Hughes cracks it down on the temple of a man in front; he falls and at the threatening gesture Hughes makes with the gun, the spectators nearest begin to withdraw. A narrow path opens, allowing the RIC to shove through and depart; Sherlock follows closely on the limping heels of Finnegan, feeling the people close and press behind him as they all spill outside, where the deluging rain leaves them sputtering and confused, barely able to see ahead and slipping in the mud. 

Once free, Sherlock is able to catch John up, apprehending him with a flashing grasp of his elbow. John circles, still on guard, but relaxes minutely when he sees Sherlock. 

“You lied,” Sherlock says; John glances around them before hissing, angrily, “You know nothing about it.”

“You lied,” Sherlock says again, “but only about Finnegan, not about your own actions. Protecting him?” He knows John can hear the mocking lilt he inflects into his last question, sees the narrowing of his eyes.

“We need him. Morale — with O’Toole —” John purses his lips. He won’t look at Sherlock. “He’s young; he took things personally. Made a mistake.”

Molly would snap back that Danny and Ned had been young, too, younger, and had made no mistake but to be born to their family, but Sherlock doesn’t. He waits.

“In war —” John says, weakly, and cuts himself off. He finally brings his eyes to meet Sherlock’s. “You’re not a soldier,” he says, with finality, and looks at Sherlock — looks — before huffing a small, weak breath and turning on his heel.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[War of Reprisals (1920)](http://youtu.be/Mjelniy9bHY)**
> 
> **1\. “A whole family,” she says, finally.** It’s unsurprising to know that it wasn’t unusual for family members to fight in the same columns; nonetheless, the O’Briens are very loosely based on a real family of that name, in which a number of the sons fought and the mother served as a messenger for the IRA.
> 
> **2\. the Daìl courts have had success in some quarters** By this time in 1920, the only justice systems available were those set up by the Daìl and military tribunals, the British civil courts having largely collapsed due to withdrawals of the RIC in outlying districts and removal by resignation or force of magistrates. Though the Daìl courts had success during the War of Independence, during the Civil War under accusations of corruption and conflicts of interest they began to break down.
> 
> **3\. “The constabulary acted well within their rights and responsibilities in apprehending and terminating escaping prisoners and in responding in kind when attacked.”** Also unsurprisingly, RIC were almost never punished for taking part in reprisals, at least in part because (as shown here) their colleagues would not testify against them. Leeson says that by and large, in cases where B &Ts were prosecuted and convicted of crimes, it was of crimes against ‘civilians’ (non-republicans) in places where they were unknown to the prosecuting police; almost no constables were imprisoned for acting against combatants (however broadly defined) in their own territories.


	20. Crimes Unparalleled

_The Irish Times — Monday November 22, 1920_

DREADFUL SERIES OF MURDERS IN DUBLIN

CONCERTED ATTACKS ON OFFICERS OF HIS MAJESTY’S FORCES

FOURTEEN SHOT DEAD AND MANY OTHERS WOUNDED

WILD SCENES AT GAELIC FOOTBALL MATCH

Yesterday morning there was enacted in Dublin a series of crimes unparallelled in the history of the city. As a result, fourteen members of His Majesty’s Forces were murdered in their houses, and a number of others seriously wounded. 

The attacks, which were apparently preconcerted, in every case occurred at the same hour. At nine o’clock in the morning the houses and hotels where these officers resided were entered by civilian bands. Most of the officers were in their bedrooms; some were dressed and ready to go to breakfast.

At least twelve were shot dead in this way, while two auxiliary police officers who were on their way to procure assistance were set upon and taken into a private house, where in a back garden they were shot dead. The official report indicates that most of these men were in some way connected with the administration of the law.

Later in the day, while a Gaelic football match was being played at Croke Park, Jones’s road, where many thousands of people were assembled, Forces of the Crown arrived, with the object of searching for the perpetrators of the crimes of the morning. According to the official report, these forces were instantly fired on by pickets of civilians guarding the grounds, and the Crown Forces immediately replied.

The result of this action was a violent stampede amongst the spectators and more firing, in the course of which it is estimated that ten persons were killed and upwards of fifty wounded. In addition to those wounded by gunfire, many suffered from injuries received in the stampede.

++

It has become standard barracks practice to take the daily newspapers with breakfast. Finnegan, Blake, and the older Peelers seek news of their hometowns; with the railroads plagued daily with strike actions and ambushes, personal correspondence is rendered less than swift. The political statements — pompous MPs whose proximately to the “Irish Question” seem to be a holiday, once, in Queenstown, before all of this — elicit unanimous scorn, but all follow closely the skirmishes, the battles, the deaths.

That Monday morning, they crowd two or three to a page — the _Irish Times_ , the _Independent_ , a rare copy of the _Dublin Evening Standard_ — voices mingling and interrupting as they read aloud.

“Women weep — pathetic scenes at hospitals across Dublin,” Blake reads from the Evening Standard. “No report yet on how they died,” he adds, skimming through the column. “Shooting, trampling —” he grimaces.

“Officers killed in their bedrooms,” O’Leary reads, speaking over Blake. “Following concerted attacks of a dreadful nature, the attackers made their escape. Fourteen officers shot dead and four left wounded.”

Killed in their beds,” Mackenzie says with disgust. “Unwilling to face them like men.”

“Were you not here last month? Killing us in our beds is hardly new,” Hughes spits back. Mackenzie scowls. He’d slept through most of the ambush, snug in his bunk, and Hughes never misses an opportunity to remind him.

“This was well-planned,” John says, as much to interrupt the incipient fight as to puzzle over what these events might mean. “Not only where they lived, where they slept, but their schedules. And coordinated to the minute, so that no one could be warned.”

Mackenzie and O’Leary shift uncomfortably, and Hughes frowns. “And?”

“And the Crown continues to treat them like rabble-rousing children,” John says, dryly. He thinks of Sherlock, of the bombs — which he’s heard little more about, though skirmishes on the roads continue. Of the IRA war council, of which they only know rumours, and of Tom Barry, the newly-minted commander of the Cork IRA, whose nearest enemies are the Macroom RIC. “There will be worse to come,” he adds.

Breaking the tense, grim silence, Hughes shoves up from his seat. “Let’s get some of the bastards before they kill us, then.” He breaks the determination of his words with a broad grin and claps John’s shoulder. “C’mon, a nice patrol will cheer you. It’s hardly raining out.” John snorts; the rain has been coming down in sheets all morning. Their uniforms have taken on a damp, heavy sogginess too familiar to all those who served in the trenches, but made undeniably more tolerable by the hot food and hot baths which greet them at the end of the day. 

John pushes away from the table as well, swinging his leg over the bench, but is arrested by Finnegan’s low, troubled voice. “They were at a football match.”

“What?”

“They were at a football match, the ones the police killed. My da, my brother, they follow it, they go to all the matches in Galway.”

“It won’t happen there,” Hughes says, reasonably. Dublin is a different story than Galway: with the Castle there, and the shame Parliament set up by the rebels, tensions and risks run higher. 

“You don’t know that. You don’t — if someone knew that I was down here, if someone up there found out —”

“That’s why you’re down here, isn’t it?” Finnegan looks up at Hughes, then at John. His eyes are wide, unblinking, the deep guileless blue of a child’s. “C’mon, we’ve a job to do. No one will harm your family.”

John is glad to have Hughes say it; glad, for it makes Finnegan blink and nod, trustingly, and stand; and glad, for it isn’t true, and Hughes knows it’s not a promise he can make, but he still says it with an ease and candor John couldn’t manage.

Patrols, now, begin with an informal sweep on foot through Macroom. They vary the time and order in which they saunter, casually, into the businesses of the town, and at their footfalls shop keeps and patrons alike fall silent. Today, more than ever, nerves jump and strain; everywhere John checks in, people avert their eyes from him jerkily, tense at every step, their silence fraught.

++

“Watson.” Hughes’s voice, grave, sounds above John’s head; he glances up from his cup of coffee, steaming and bitter, to see, first, the crumpled newspaper Hughes brandishes at him, then the man’s sour face. 

“Hughes?” In response, he shoves the paper closer to John, who takes it, looking up at Hughes while settling it to the table, pressing out the creases. With a deep sigh, like he’s completed some arduous task, Hughes drops to the seat next to him. 

“You have family in Liverpool,” he says. It’s not a question. He jerks his chin to the newspaper, which John finally looks down to. The _Irish Times._ He’s glanced at it each day, though the endless repetition of Sunday last’s events, the names listed again and again, the analysis of each movement, has begun to weary him. He scans the headlines: SHOOTING AT CROKE PARK — NEW INFORMATION; LEAGUE OF NATIONS; RUSSIAN TROUBLES; CENSORSHIP OF PLAYS. Nothing about Liverpool.

“Below the fold.” John flips the page over.

SINN FEIN — FIRES AT LIVERPOOL — WHOLESALE DESTRUCTION  
A series of disastrous fires, believed to have been caused by Sinn Feiners, broke out last night in 12 cotton warehouses in Liverpool and across the city. The damage is estimated at several thousands of pounds sterling. The attacks on private homes indicate the commencement of the threatened strikes against families of those soldiers who serve with the RIC in Ireland. The police in Liverpool have been overwhelmed with requests for protection.

John’s hand fists the page until it tears. He shoves his chair back and stands.

“Finnegan saw it first — he wanted to tell you.” Hughes shrugs. Finnegan has barely spoken an unnecessary word to John — to anyone — in a month, managing his duties with automaton regularity but little life. His face is wan, his nerves jumpy, and though he worries over each scrap of news from Galway he refuses to write his family for fear his letters will be intercepted. John lifts one hand in response. He has no time to deal with Finnegan’s guilt, and littler patience.

“I have to —”

“Go, go, yeah.”

John half-runs into town, shoving into the post office only to meet another half-dozen officers waiting to use the town’s single public telegraph machine or send post. Behind the desk, the postmistress, Mrs Flanagan, transcribes in her slow, elderly hand the message an impatient Auxie at the front of the queue wishes to send. 

The soldier’s fingers, drumming against the edge of the desk, echo John’s own nervous foot-tapping. He knows, logically, that a few minutes will make little difference; if Harry is hurt, the injury is long since done, regardless of when John’s telegram arrives. An unwanted guilt settles in his gut at the thought of his own dormant pen. Despite Harry’s occasional cheery postcards, John hasn’t written her in months. He resolutely does not allow himself to think about whatever glib, casual words he sent her last and if those are to be the very last, in fact. 

Between him and the desk, three Auxies argue over the wording of a letter; one holds a battered sheet of paper against his thigh, scrawling as the other two bicker. 

“— take offence to —”

“Take _great_ offence to —”

“Yes, great offence. Great offence to the suggestion that C Company has —”

“On this or any other occasion —”

“Yes, yes — on this or any other occasion, killed pigs —”

“Or any animal.”

“Or any animal. Furthermore, the suggestion —”

“Implication.”

“Implication of improper behaviour is resented. Any further such lies will be met with a bullet.”

“Signed — His Majesty’s Royal Irish Constabulary, Auxiliary Division, C Company, Macroom.”

The scribe struggles to keep up, frowning. He murmurs their words to himself as he completes the letter; the company title only just fits, in small, cramped script, at the end. Sloppily folding it, he pushes it into an envelope already addressed to — John squints, curious — the _Cork Evening Echo._

“Taking part in the free press?” John asks; the Auxie holding the letter glances up at him, brow furrowed. John gestures to the letter.

“Oh!” He grins. “Just setting some fool journalist straight.”

“He was putting on that we’d killed a pig, or some such,” chimed one of his fellows, clearly affronted. 

“We might shoot swine — Cork swine — but we don’t kill animals,” the third Auxie adds, with a braying laugh. The others join in; John raises an eyebrow with a tight smile, nearly wishing he hadn’t asked. 

Above their laughter, the raised voice of the impatient soldier at the front of the queue cuts sharp, as he thumps his fist against the desk and shouts, “I don’t have all fucking morning.” Mrs Flanagan blinks up at him, owlish behind scratched and yellowed glasses. 

“And I haven’t the time for your cheek, young man.” With a jerk, the Auxie pulls his revolver from his hip, pointing it at the old woman’s head. 

“I said I haven’t got all fucking morning,” he says, cocking the revolver. Mrs Flanagan leans away from the barrel but doesn’t step back. Her mouth narrows to a tight line.

“For the love of —” John mutters, shoving against the men in front of him to pass, but before he can reach the Auxie, one of his cohort is sighing disgustedly and grabbing the man’s arm.

“Fucking hell, Bayley.” He reaches to pull the gun away, which, given its current aim is a reckless move, but Bayley drops it without protest, and as his interceptor turns John recognises George Nathan. Nathan releases the cock on the revolver and hands it back to Bayley, butt first, who takes it with a cowed duck of his head and holsters it once more. 

“Apologies, Mrs Flanagan. Take your time.” Mrs Flanagan mutters something which the soldiers prudently ignore and makes her way to the telegraph machine at the back of the room, and the men shuffle back into a messy queue, quieter now. Leaning against the desk, elbows cocked casually, Nathan catches John’s eye, tipping his chin back. 

“Not the first person I’d expect to be the reasonable presence in a room,” John says, pointedly. Bayley blinks, looking between John and Nathan. They haven’t been in the same room since the night of the dance, three months ago, and John hasn’t missed the man’s leering, appraising gaze. 

“I have hidden depths,” he answers dryly. He shoves away from the desk as Mrs Flanagan finally shuffles up to take Bayley’s payment. He hands it over, not making eye contact, and leaves without speaking. Waving the letter-writing trio forward, Nathan steps next to John as to wait as the men purchase their stamp. John can feel the sweep of his eyes, and he resolutely keeps his gaze forward. 

“You’re not still sore about —” Nathan waves his hand impatiently; John doesn’t know if he means to encompass the fight itself, or his words — if he remembers them. 

“No,” John says shortly; Nathan snorts. 

“Right. Spending a lot of time with your young lord, then, recently?” John doesn’t answer, lets his hand curl into a fist. The amusement drips off Nathan’s words. “Only I’d heard he’d got himself into a spot of trouble a month back. And you’d been seen with him…” He allows his voice to trail off suggestively. John grits his teeth, before curtly asking exactly what Nathan wishes him to ask.

“What trouble?”

Nathan smacks his lips, taking pleasure in parcelling out his information slowly. “A late-night visit, so I heard. Not the enjoyable sort,” he adds, with a leering grin. John represses a sigh. “A warning. Of the physical sort. Tom Barry himself, rumour has it. Your boy must be making himself known.”

Tom Barry himself; commander of the West Cork Flying Column. Why hadn’t Sherlock mentioned it? 

“I’m surprised he didn’t tell you himself,” Nathan says. John’s hand twitches. “Since he has you to protect his honour, and all.” John’s rolling his shoulder back, ready to throw a punch, post office be damned, when the trio in front of them finally turns and pushes past them to exit, jostling against John.

He settles for cutting in front of Nathan and saying, “Do you ever shut your fucking mouth?” as he slams his message down on the table. Mrs Flanagan blinks up at him, unperturbed, and Nathan only snorts, amused. 

“Most men don’t ask me to,” he says, self-satisfied. John represses the shudder of revulsion that rolls down his spine and answers Mrs Flanagan’s questions about the telegram’s destination. 

“Liverpool?” Nathan says over his shoulder, as though continuing a congenial conversation. “Shame about the fires. I’ve spent some time there — that name, Harry Watson, does ring a bell.” At his sister’s name, John turns sharply, fisting the collar of Nathan’s tunic and shoving him back toward the wall in one movement.

“Whatever you’re about to say about my sister, I recommend you reconsider.”

“Your sister.” His voice is high, strained against John’s pressing fist, but he doesn’t struggle back, merely smirks at John. “Well, I knew she wasn’t your wife. Not any man’s wife. Is it a family affliction, then?” John’s hand twitches, his mouth tastes bitter; he releases Nathan’s collar and half-turns away, catching his breath, before he swings back, fist hitting Nathan square on the jaw. 

Nathan brings his hand up to dab at his mouth. “Oh, you are predictable,” he says, and blocks John’s next thrown punch, catching John’s shoulder with his elbow and driving him back into the centre of the room. John gets in a hit to his ribs, and blocks Nathan’s answering punch; Nathan keeps his feet moving, directing them in a dance across the small room. 

After two blocked hits, Nathan grins and beckons John with an open hand. “Come on, are we dancing or fighting?”

John doesn’t respond, but feints a punch only to follow it up with an undercut that hits — satisfyingly — in Nathan’s solar plexus. Air leaves his lungs with a groan and he stumbles back. John follows with quick jabs to his ribs, driving Nathan up against the desk. Winded, he stumbles against it, and finally holds his hands up. 

“Fine.” His voice croaks, broken. “You’ve convinced me.” Behind him, Mrs Flanagan stands, looking deeply unimpressed. “I’ll leave your — I’ll let Lord Holmes be.” 

John steps back, wiping his hands on his thighs. “I’d really rather you didn’t speak to me — or to him — at all.” Nathan’s eyes glint, annoyed, but he nods. Fishing in his pocket, John draws out a coin, which he smacks down on the desk for Mrs Flanagan, and leaves the post office. 

++

When the morning dawns with no response, John returns to the post office. His hopes are, in fact, not in vain, for Mrs Flanagan’s usual messenger has not shown up and a pile of telegrams sit on the desk, awaiting their destinations.

Mrs Flanagan peers at him, eyes magnified to weathered, age-yellowed globes behind the thick lenses of her glasses. “Watson?” she repeats. John nods, and she shuffles through the stack of telegrams on her desk arthritically. “Watson, Watson,” she mutters to herself as she moves the pages from one pile to another. John hopes none of them contain news of a time-sensitive nature. “Ah.” She finally pulls out a page, pushing it across the desk to John. He tips a coin into her hand as he lifts it, turning to angle it to the light.

_BOTH FINE STOP YOU ARE A PRAT STOP LETTER TO FOLLOW STOP_

John snickers, relief settling in his shoulders as he shoves the door open to step outside — and runs bodily into Sherlock.

He swallows the apologies on his tongue, stepping back as Sherlock straightens his coat. They’ve seen each other in passing, but haven’t spoken since the hearing; John tells himself his duties haven’t allowed him much liberty. “Hello —” he starts, uncertain.

Sherlock’s eyes sweep over him, and he tramples John’s greeting with a rush of words. “You’ve just had good news — from England. Someone close to you, but —” His gaze flicks quickly over John’s face, the grey of his irises pale, unsettling, in the cool light. John waits. “Your parents are dead, of course, so your — ah! Liverpool, of course. Your brother sends news that he’s unscathed in the recent violence. You feel guilt for not having written earlier, but the two of you were not close until recently.”

John blinks. That’s not bad, not for a crumpled telegram in his hand and little else. “Harry’s fine,” he confirms. “We hadn’t spoken in years, until around when I was injured.” Sherlock grins, pleased with himself. “Harry’s short for Harriet.”

“Your sister.” Sherlock narrows his eyes at John’s laugh. 

“There’s always something,” John says, teasingly. He bumps his elbow to Sherlock’s arm, enjoying the slow, puzzled way Sherlock looks down at the point of contact. The street is hushed, nearly empty, and the air dry and cool, and after the worry of the past day John feels pleasingly warmed by Harry’s telegram.

“You’re relieved,” Sherlock says abruptly.

“Yes, well. My sister isn’t dead.” John glances up at Sherlock, who peers into the distance, as though something terribly interesting lurks just beyond the horizon. “We don’t all hate our siblings, you know.” Sherlock snorts.

“If only Sinn Fein would let me know when next they plan to set fire to a city, I would do all in my power to ensure Mycroft’s presence.” The corner of his mouth tips up, only just. 

“Your Irregulars not privy to that information, then?”

“The IRA war council appears to frown upon children infiltrating their HQ.”

“Can’t imagine why.” John ducks his head, grinning at the ground. The lurking bruise at his jaw makes its presence known at the movement, reminding John of yesterday’s fight. A flush creeps up his neck at the memory of Nathan’s words, his insinuations, and with his next step he moves, just slightly, away from Sherlock. 

“You, um —” he starts, then swallows. “You haven’t done anything stupid, have you?”

Sherlock looks down his nose disdainfully; with his collar raised against the chill, his hawkish shoulders and the high rises of his cheekbones seem sharper, his eyes keener, all serving to give the glare he directs at John a predatory edge. “I generally refrain from stupidity,” he says, lips thinning in annoyance. 

John rolls his eyes. “I didn’t mean — I mean, have you been warned off?” Sherlock’s shoulders jerk up, once, before he moves back into his casual stroll. The movement, jolting and strange on Sherlock’s form, pulls at John’s memory. “You have. That night I — god, you were injured, I remember, you —”

“It was nothing,” Sherlock interrupts. “Hardly worth mentioning.”

“You know they only ever give one warning, right? The next visit comes at the end of a gun.” 

“You should know; your side uses the same tactic. Don’t always warn, though, do you?” His grin, a long, thin slash like a narrow blade, chills. 

“Fuck’s sake, Sherlock, that’s not what — you were warned off, and you’ve not stopped, I’ve no doubt. You’re trying to get yourself killed.”

Sherlock scoffs. “I won’t get killed.”

“Your title doesn’t protect you, you know. God, it’d probably make them more pleased to shoot you.”

Stopping in the middle of the road, Sherlock turns on John, looming over him. “I have no illusions about what the circumstances of my birth do or do not afford me, believe me that. My safety is none of your concern, and I’m more than capable of handling some meagre punching-up from a second-rate volunteer gunman.”

“Second-rate volunteer gunman? Not Tom Barry himself, then?” Sherlock’s eyes narrow, then he laughs, the scoffing sound far too loud in the quiet street.

“Oh, you have been chatting. Whose morsel was that, then? Your bosom friend Moran? Hughes? God, no wonder the constabulary never accomplishes anything; you’re all sitting about gossipping like dowager aunts.”

Shoving past him, John keeps walking; Sherlock trails by a step or two, and John grits his teeth. “Nathan,” he says, finally. “Right before I punched him.”

Grabbing John’s arm, Sherlock pulls him around. A frown briefly furrows his brow, and he doesn’t say anything for a moment. “Nathan?” 

“Yes. Plenty to say about you, as usual. You should pay him a call, he seems quite enamoured.”

Sherlock waves his hand impatiently. “That doesn’t matter — what did he say, exactly. How would Nathan —”

“Just a rumour, he said.” Sherlock stares at him, hard. “I’m pretty sure he was just trying to rile me. I mean, what he said after, too —”

“He didn’t say from whom he heard it?” Sherlock grasps John’s upper arms, hard enough to make him wince. “Think, John, this is important.”

“No. He just — you know what he’s like, makes out like he’s important, like he knows —” Knows things he shouldn’t, knows things you’d rather stay unmentioned.

Sherlock peers at John, but he’s not really looking at him; behind the pale grey of his irises, behind the furrowed lines between his brows, his mind works through some problem John hasn’t yet seen. After a long moment, he shakes his head, eyes focusing once more on John, and seems to realise suddenly that his hands still grasp John about the shoulders, and drops them quickly. 

As he takes a step back, Sherlock’s gaze drifts over John’s shoulder; John is caught, for a moment, in the way the flutter of Sherlock’s lids shadows his cheeks, in the puzzled twist of his lower lip, before he turns to follow Sherlock’s stare.

At the far end of the street, just before it curves out of view toward the castle, a single figure walks — staggers, really. The pale sun leaves the figure mostly in shadow, but by the tunic and the rifle tip emerging over his left shoulder, it’s an Auxie. 

John breaks into a run, Sherlock on his heels, and as they reach the man he looks up, slowly, mouth twisting into a wry, crimson grin. Sebastian Moran, his face showing more blood than flesh, his moustache matted and dark. Capless, his hair sticks to his scalp, and blood leaks from his thigh, painting his trouser leg in long, dark drips. Stopping short with a few feet between them, John flexes his hands ineffectually. 

Moran’s uncanny grin, bloodied teeth between tight-stretched lips, leaves him, with shoulders still hunched forward and weight on his uninjured leg, looking more like a ghastly play-actor than a soldier. John notices, for the first time, that Moran holds his Luger loosely in one hand. Holding one hand up, John takes a slow step forward. Moran’s laugh, barking and too-loud, sets John’s teeth together.

“Stare if you must, Watson. I’m the only one left.” His voice is raw and dry.

“What?”

“Ambush,” he says shortly. Shoving his free hand into one pocket, he tugs free a handkerchief and wipes the blood from his face, ineffectually. It streaks and smears with the dirt and sweat, leaving his eyes and his bloodied teeth shockingly bright against the murky, dark mask of his face. “Twenty men down at least.”

“Jesus,” John breathes.

“Oh, Jesus hasn’t anything to do with it,” Moran says darkly. “Unless he wants us to shoot those murdering bastards in their sleep.” Straightening up, he winces a bit as he puts weight on his injured leg. 

“God, let’s get you to the doc,” John says. If it were any other soldier, he’d already be supporting him with his shoulder, helping him walk, but Moran’s forbidding glare prevents him. Instead, Moran continues in his half-dragging, awkward gait. Catching John glancing at the pistol in his hand, he holds it up with a dry laugh.

“Suppose I don’t need this now.” He holsters it, though he leaves the holster unsnapped. 

“No other survivors? You’re certain?” Sherlock says, abruptly. Moran looks up at him, glancing up and down as though taking his measure and finding him wanting. 

“There wasn’t a man there who still had his body and head in one piece. You find me the man who can survive that; I’d like to meet him.” John inhales sharply; that’s brutal, even for this strange war.

“What happened? I mean —”

Moran shakes his head grimly. A few people have opened their doors, curious about the strange trio making its way up the road, but Moran’s blood-soaked figure sends them back inside quickly enough. 

“Regular enough patrol, at first. Two tenders, heading west. We weren’t far out of town when —” A hacking cough cuts off his words; he spits blood into the street and clears his throat, moving again as he continues his story. “Went around a curve and there was a soldier in the road, in an officer’s tunic and cap. Nathan slowed, thinking what we all thought, yeah? That it was one of ours, needing help.”

“Nathan was driving?” Sherlock interrupts. 

“He was,” Moran confirms. “Strange, that; he didn’t usually. I always thought he didn’t know how. Anyway, we slow down, pull up to help, when the man in the road opens fire, backed by a dozen rebels, at least, coming from the forest.”

He stops again, and John is about to volunteer to help him move on, when Moran peers over his head and says, distantly, “I haven’t seen a slaughter like this since the Somme. They didn’t stop shooting, not after men fell, not after the second tender tried to surrender.” He falls silent for a long moment before shaking his head and focusing his gaze on John once more. “I can make it from here; go inform Smyth.”

John nods; the doctor’s is only around the corner, but he still waits to see that Moran makes it before setting off toward the castle. “Danielson should know, too,” he says to Sherlock. “Will you —” Sherlock nods, though his expression holds its puzzled, unfocused gaze, and heads the other direction. 

Colonel Smyth’s clerk doesn’t wish to disturb him at first, until John says with calm force, “Twenty men of C Company have just been slaughtered on patrol. He’ll want to see me.” The clerk pales and raps on the Colonel’s door with a nervous, stuttering knock. Smyth’s booming voice calls them in, and John closes the door behind him.

Smyth grows progressively paler and angrier as John recounts Moran’s tale. Before John can reassure him that Moran is at the doctor’s, he shoves his chair back, calls for his clerk, and begins strapping on his Sam Browne. “That was our whole Number Two Platoon,” he says, shoving his pistol into its holster. “For fuck’s sake, how am I supposed to —” He seems to remember John’s presence and cuts himself off, shaking his head. 

Leaving a few men on guard duty at the castle, Smyth gathers some of the men from the remaining platoon into a tender, pulling out just as Danielson arrives with Sherlock, Molly, and a man who must be Molly’s father, the undertaker. 

“Sergeant,” Smyth says, a question underlying his greeting.

“There’ll need to be an investigation,” Danielson says. “Until the District Inspector can arrive, I’m the ranking regular Constabulary officer. I trust you agree.” Smyth’s mouth tightens, but he nods. All this reckoning about authority, when twenty men are dead, lying somewhere on a muddy road. 

The rain begins before they reach the edge of town, soaking them in minutes. It drips down the back of John’s neck, pooling under his collar, as he grips tight to the edge of the seat. Across from him, Sherlock sits straight-backed, unfocused gaze looking far beyond John, as water runs in rivulets down his hair, unnoticed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[Sinn Fein Attacks Train (1920-1929)](http://youtu.be/gAxsmh__gfA)**
> 
> **1\. DREADFUL SERIES OF MURDERS IN DUBLIN** The article text here is taken directly from the Irish times the day after the “Bloody Sunday” of 1920, in which fourteen RIC were killed by the IRA in their homes, and the RIC retaliated by shooting up a Gaelic football match, resulting in a further fourteen civilian deaths. Three suspected IRA prisoners held in Dublin Castle were also beaten to death. These killings were a major player in the shift in British public support for Crown forces in Ireland.
> 
>  **2\. Tom Barry, the newly-minted commander of the Cork IRA** I’ve mentioned Barry in notes before; he’s most well-known for his memoirs, _Guerrilla Days in Ireland_ , which recounts his time as commander of the 3rd (West) Cork Brigade. He joined up in mid-summer 1920 and rose through the ranks quite quickly; by November he was the commander of a flying column known for its discipline and bravery.
> 
>  **3\. SINN FEIN — FIRES AT LIVERPOOL** This article is my own invention, but cobbled together from existing reports. The other headlines John scans first were all real headlines of the day.
> 
>  **4\. “We might shoot swine — Cork swine — but we don’t kill animals.”** As much as I’d like to claim this bastardly line for myself, it’s paraphrased from a real occurrence. A group of police visited the home of a journalist in Tralee who had filed a report that police had killed pigs and fowl. One of the Peelers said, as quoted by Leeson, “It is all lies. We don’t kill pigs or any animals. We don’t shoot swine, but we shoot Kerry swine, and we shall shoot more. The Sinn Feiners have declared war on us, and we are up against them.”
> 
> I'm pleased to announce that I've finished the full, final draft of this story, so, now that I'm not in danger of catching myself up, I'm going to be posting remaining chapters **once a week**. Thanks for sticking with me!


	21. Kilmichael

The rain can’t wash away the stench of battle. It breaks over the air as they round the corner, pungent and sickening, clogging Sherlock’s nose, his mouth, his throat. He blinks back the water that runs into his eyes, leaning to see around the side of the Crossley as they approach the ambush site. The two tenders from the patrol block the road, at crossed angles; Sherlock stands and jumps from the back as the Crossley slows to a stop behind them.

The broadside of the rear tender, the second one to be attacked, is pocked and cratered with bullet holes, its tyres flat and one door hanging from a single hinge, creaking slightly under the barrage of rain. Five bodies splay over the sides and rear, caps strewn in the mud, rifles dangling from limp arms. Another four bodies sink in the mud between the two trucks. The stench overwhelms. 

Stepping around them, Sherlock proceeds to the second truck. He tunes his mind to the twisted metal, to projectiles and pathways, to likely troop movements and attempted strategies. Away from the stink, from the mud turned black with blood, from lifeless eyes and gaping mouths flooding with rain. 

The second tender leans like a kneeling supplicant, its back broken. The cab, blown to pieces by a bomb, yawns open, its interior — and its driver — spilling to the outside. The bomb the first act of attack, taking by surprise the men on patrol, whose bodies remain littered in the back, shot down in the scramble to retaliate. Six in the rear, and another four on the ground. Hoisting himself into the back of the tender, Sherlock examines the debris, commits the poses of the men to memory. Arms flung out in surprise, pistols still holstered and rifles hanging or pinned under bodies. He picks up an ammunition box, rattles it. At the back of the tender, a Lewis gun points to the sky, an empty flagpole. 

Moving forward, he climbs into the cab, gingerly avoiding the blood and flesh sprayed across the seats. Behind the steering wheel is what remains of the driver — his legs, the jagged edge of a torso spilling a ropey pile of intestines. What’s left of the cab reeks of faeces and blood; Sherlock holds one cuff over his nose as he crouches on the seat, examining the underside of the dash. Mentally, he files through his research on explosives — blast patterns, explosive residue, and shrapnel trajectories — and tries to fit together how the grenade was thrown. 

Sherlock jumps back to the ground with a messy splash. Twenty bodies in total and — what was it Moran said? _There wasn’t a man who had his head and body in one piece._ Poetic license, to be sure, but the bodies strewn and mired in the mud, in the twisted remains of the tenders, do bear the evidence of a brutal attack. No man with fewer than three shots, many with bayonet stabs and bloody, gaping cuts. The body at Sherlock’s feet retains only half an intact skull, the rest having been bashed in by some sort of blunt object. The bloody pulp of his brain leaks out into the mud, the human matter becoming indistinguishable from the natural. A preface of his decomposition. 

He turns and is jerked back to present: the soldiers circle around the ambush site, as though protecting their dead comrades, and Danielson, Smyth, Molly, and Mr Hooper pick their way through the bodies. Beyond them, Sherlock can just see John, who hasn’t made it into the destruction yet, looking onto the scene with tense determination. Even through the rain, his tight, drawn-in shoulders, the jut of his chin, and the palm of his hand pressing against the butt of his gun telegraph his anger. 

With a sharp movement, John jerks his chin up, eyes searching across the scene, above the carnage. Spying Sherlock, he begins to make his way across, taking care to cut widely around the scattered bodies. 

Sherlock’s vantage must be that of the attackers; from here he can see the whole scene spread before him, can imagine the rattle of gunfire spraying over the shocked and unaware men. When John steps next to him, his shoulders square up unconsciously, his hand strays to his hip with a soldier’s instinct.

“What a bloody mess,” he says, finally, with a huff of air that seems to telegraph the insufficiency of his — of any — words. Sherlock tips his head.

“What do you think happened? As a soldier.”

John draws his lips in, exhales through his nose. Allowing his eyes to settle on the scene, he traces the movements of the tenders: up the road, around the corner, slowing, turning — exploding. “Moran said —” he starts.

“Ignore what Moran said. What do you see?”

Glancing at Sherlock, John narrows his eyes. After a moment’s consideration, he nods. “They came around the corner and encountered something unexpected. The tracks are deep here —” he gestures to the water-logged trenches behind the closest tender — “so they were driving slowly. There’s no barricade and they wouldn’t slow for an ambush, not like this.” Sherlock nods; the evidence in this particular does correspond with Moran’s statement. 

“They must have been nearly at a stop, don’t you think? When the bomb hit?” Sherlock hums his agreement. “So, the bomb hits, and the first truck is stopped that way, and then a firefight breaks out. The second tender comes around the corner, and joins in, but they’re all slaughtered.” He swallows, smiling grimly at Sherlock. “How’d I do?”

“Good. Very good, in fact. Though, you’ve missed nearly everything of importance.” John scowls, mutters something Sherlock ignores. “Why don’t we see if our resident drunk can do any better?” 

He turns back to the group, John following closely. In a whisper, John asks, “I thought you said Molly did all the important work?”

“She does, but somehow no one official in the RIC seems to realise.”

Danielson, Smyth, and the Hoopers pick their way through the carnage, avoiding the bodies but still managing to trample any number of interesting tracks. Sherlock’s rush to be the first to walk through the scene had only a little to do with excitement; there was not much hope that, between the soldiers and the rain, any evidence would remain longer than the first few minutes.

Molly fumbles with an umbrella and a notebook as she follows a few steps behind her father. Each time she dips her head to scribble down one of his bellowed observations, the umbrella dips with her, so that before they’ve made it past the first tender her back and neck are soaked. Her silence is made more remarkable by her father’s brash and bumbling stream of words. Despite the whiskey on his breath, he manages to be largely correct, though missing any nuance in his observations. He seems, in fact, more intent on extrapolating on the bravery of the soldiers involved than on delving into the events of the ambush. 

“Good men; good soldiers,” he proclaims before coughing extravagantly into his sleeve. “Credit to their company, I’ve no doubt. Damn shame.” He looks significantly at Danielson, who blinks back, unimpressed. Any idiot could see the frostiness between Danielson and Smyth; any idiot except Mr Hooper, it appears. Smyth himself pushes forward, impatiently.

“Yes, damn good men, and half of my company. It’s more than a damn shame; it’s an outrage. If I have to track down Tom Barry and his paddy cowards and slit their necks myself, I’ll do it. Dying like honourable men is far more than they deserve.”

Molly, he notices, still holds her pencil aloft as though waiting to record more but stares, unblinkingly, at the body closest to her. The man had been shot three times at least, then bayoneted through the neck. His head droops away from his shoulders, his trachea showing white in the mire of blood and mud making up his neck. Molly’s face is the same pale white, her poised hand trembling just slightly, pencil clenched too tightly; more affected than he’d ever seen her at a dead body, even that morning a few weeks ago. 

Making for the second tender, Smyth stomps through the mud, sending up splatters with each step. Though Danielson and Hooper follow, Molly stands still, fixed as though held in thrall to the man at her feet. Her umbrella droops; water drips off the brim of her hat to land on her cheeks, her shoulders. John notices, stepping forward with one hand hesitantly held out.

“Miss Hooper? Molly? Perhaps you should go back to the truck, wait until we’re done here.”

At first, Molly doesn’t seem to hear him, but as he edges closer she jerks back. “Don’t — I’m, I’m fine.” The bright wildness of her eyes quickly shutters, her expression composing into resignation. “Let’s just, just finish. I’ll have a long night of work.”

John lets out a shallow breath, as though he hadn’t thought of that. “Couldn’t your father —” 

Molly only shoves past him, taking her steps as broad as the muck will allow. “It’s my responsibility.”

After they have made their notes — Molly’s in her notebook, Sherlock’s in his head — and captured a few photographs, which will no doubt be of little value, the rain obscuring all detail, Danielson glances at Sherlock, leaving his question unvoiced. Sherlock nods; the rain has nearly washed away anything remaining of value and his mental map of the scene will be more than sufficient to puzzle over the two or three details which continue to require a proper explanation. It hadn’t been difficult to persuade Danielson to allow him to aid with the investigation; this was easily the largest ambush the county has seen, and in lieu of the presence of the District Inspector, all responsibility — and blame — for its swift resolution sits on Danielson’s shoulders. His only request had been that Sherlock not make his involvement apparent to Smyth, whose mistrust of civilians and Irishmen alike would leave him little disposed to listen. 

The soldiers gather the bodies, placing them in the back of the one working tender. The unceremonious pile reduces their already-broken bodies down into parts: limbs and torsos and wide-blinking heads, some identifiable, others so mutilated that only the particularities of their uniforms connect them to their names, their living selves. The soldiers give a moment’s respect to each of their cohort as the names are called for the record.

Sherlock recognises only a few. He’d heard the name Bayley, though didn’t know the cadet by sight; Armstrong he’d encountered once or twice at the Castle. George Nathan had been, as Moran attested, driving the first tender. His legs had been protected under the steering wheel column, but are severed at the hip; much of the rest of him is scattered across the cab and the surrounding area. One of the Auxies recognises him by his boots.

“Whale-skin; he went on about it.” The man retains a peaked jaundice to his face; after pulling the legs free, he’d dropped them to vomit in the ditch. “You can tell a good soldier by his boots, he said.” He looks down at his own: the best shining may never bring those boots clean again. 

John no doubt knew most, if not all, of the men, and he gives his aid silently. Lifting, heaving, piling them on: it seems all combatants in this war will be reduced to the status of baggage. The transport of supplies; the transport of weapons; the transport of soldiers; the transport of bodies. All war simply the reality of moving things from here to there.

And so they set off. John, Sherlock, and the rest of the soldiers return to town on foot, having given their spaces to the dead men. It isn’t difficult to fall behind, to let the Auxies move forward; at this moment, John is no more of their cohort than Sherlock. 

“What did I miss, then?” John asks as soon as the distance between them and the soldiers has stretched enough to avoid being overheard. 

“Hmm? Oh. The bootprints from the woods; the rifles; the ammunition boxes.” John says nothing; when Sherlock glances over, he’s raising his eyebrows expectantly. 

“The rebels waiting in the woods for the ambush. Not unusual in itself, but the prints there are minimal and fresh. They hadn’t been waiting long when the platoon arrived.”

John frowns. “Coincidence? Luck?”

“The universe is rarely so lazy. They were told precisely when the platoon departed.”

“Okay. That could be anyone, though; it’s not as though a platoon of twenty men can leave town quietly. We know there are plenty of sympathisers in town.”

Sherlock nods, but the precision of the timing still nags. Given methods used by the RIC to ensure unpredictability in their patrol schedules, ambushes are far more often a case of the rare lucky stakeout. “Single facts rarely produce a solid answer. The rifles: none of the men in the first tender fired their rifles, or, by the position of their bodies, even held them ready.”

“They were taken by surprise.”

“They were trained soldiers. Do you ever lower your weapon while on patrol?”

John narrows his eyes at Sherlock. “Are you saying they were told to stand down?”

Sherlock shrugs. “Which leaves us with either an incompetent order or a traitorous one. Who was in command of Platoon Two?”

“Armstrong. He was in the second tender, front left. He is — was — respected. Quiet, but efficient. But —” John hesitates, clearly rolling a thought in his mind. He shrugs, finally. “Any of those men would follow an order from Moran, as well. By commission he outranks most of them, and he’s — well.”

“Commanding,” Sherlock finishes. “And the only survivor.” 

“None of this is proof of anything, though.”

“No,” Sherlock agrees. “Troubling, though. And when you add in the ammunition boxes.”

“What about them?”

“They were empty.”

++

Danielson finds them as soon as they arrive back in town, impatient for Sherlock’s opinion on the ambush.

“This is a bloody mess,” he says. “Without swift retaliation, a defeat of this measure could lower morale in troops across the island. We’re doubling patrols, but if there’s anything else you can tell me about what Barry and his column might know or do next —” His face, set and lined, bears little of the exasperated tolerance he usually expresses for Sherlock. Instead, his eyes fix on Sherlock full of grasping anxiety. Not ready to make any pronouncements about his suspicions, Sherlock shakes his head.

“I have some leads to follow up. Once the bodies have been examined —” He lifts one shoulder, apologetic though uncertain why. Danielson nods, drumming his fingertips against his thigh. 

“Fine. Report back to me as soon as you know anything. Sherlock —” he says, as Sherlock steps away — “I mean it. This isn’t a time to show off. We’re not playing.”

Sherlock grits his teeth. “The twenty dead bodies did suggest that to me,” he snarls, and strides away.

“You’re on duty, constable,” Danielson says as John turns to follow. Sherlock pauses.

John gives him a small shrug. “Sir.” Lines still mark Danielson’s furrowed expression as John leaves. 

++

Activity overwhelms the mortuary when he arrives. Hooper directs the soldiers, who move the bodies from the tender into the back courtyard. The tarpaulin they pull over the piled bodies has dark, seeping stains on the underside, its new purpose to act as temporary shroud to blood-soaked men. 

“It’s a damn shame. Damn shame,” he repeats, over and again, his head shaking in unconscious ritual. Molly touches his elbow, gently. 

“Da? Why don’t you rest, now? I can start all of this.” Mr Hooper blinks down at his daughter, uncomprehending. “It’s okay,” she reassures.

“Oh,” he says, nodding. “I will. Maybe a little drink —” Sherlock catches the wince that Molly manages to hide from her father. “I’ll just go to the pub. Just for a drink.” He turns, patting his pockets absently before nodding assuredly to himself and pushing open the courtyard gate.

They watch him leave. “When was the last time he prepared a body?” 

“1916,” Molly says, not looking at Sherlock as she pushes open the door into the mortuary. 

He follows. Two bodies await Molly’s hand; both bearing brutal injuries which leave their faces nearly obliterated. As though she had directed the men to leave her the worst-off, the most dejected and destroyed soldiers to start with. Molly washes her hands at a basin in the corner, scrubbing violently at the nails. Her still-clean nails. 

“And you keep on, and let him accept all the credit?” He’s goading her, pressing her. She ignores him. “You’re old enough to leave, you know. You could go to university. He’s a drunk; he doesn’t need you when he has a bottle.”

“It’s my responsibility.” She leans her hands against the work table, pressing hard for one long moment before straightening. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

_It’s my responsibility._ “Oh. Oh!” Sherlock breathes in, shaking his head. How had he never — “How long have you been an IRA spy, Molly?”

Molly doesn’t look at him, but says everything in the tightening of her shoulders. “I don’t expect you to understand,” she says, again, more quietly. She begins preparing her tray, lining up instruments with precise care.

“I suppose rebellion is as much a family business as undertaking,” Sherlock says, with more bitterness than he’d intended. “Hoping to get yourself killed for the glorious cause, just like Seamus?”

“You know _nothing_ about it,” Molly says. She shoves against the table, sending her equipment rattling. “You don’t know what it’s like; you weren’t even here when —” Taking a deep breath, she forcefully unclenches her hands, lays them on the scarred tabletop. She looks at her fingers, not at him. “Padraig brought his body back, did you know that? And it hadn’t been — it had — the surrendered Volunteers had been jailed for weeks, at that point, and the dead had been buried too quickly, in shallow graves. Padraig brought him back in a box, you can’t even call it a coffin. It was just — all I remember is the smell of decomposition. There was nothing else left.”

Sherlock resolutely doesn’t think of Seamus, mouldering in a pine box, of Padraig digging him out under the cover of night. Of his youth giving way to the decomposition of death, of his body becoming fecund ground for maggots and flies. Of his own memories of how he’d prowled through the rubble of buildings destroyed in the Rising, once he’d returned to Belvedere, night trips fuelled by the excitement of shattered windows, bullet-pocked walls, felled columns, blood-splatted floors. 

“And you thought that was a noble way to die,” he says, instead of thinking. 

“Fuck you,” Molly spits. “He died for his beliefs, and I know they aren’t yours, but at least he had some. At least he cared — about people, about things other than, than your wretched experiments —” She breaks off, every muscle in her body tight.

“So you took up the mantle?” 

She looks at him, finally, and in her wide eyes he sees something of the girl she was, before Seamus and Padraig discovered the cause, before the Rising. “Not — not at first,” she says, shakily. She heaves a great sigh, leaning more heavily against the table where, between them, a dead Auxiliary lays. “Padraig was injured on — I’m not sure, on a reconnaissance mission, maybe — and he came to me. I stitched him up and he asked me to let him know if I saw anything strange. 

“This was a year ago, the summer. The Tans hadn’t yet arrived. It was only messages, nothing — nothing important.”

“At first. Then?”

She shrugs, an emphatic lift of one shoulder. “Danielson started needing me — well, Da — more. More bodies, more paperwork.”

“And suddenly you had more information. And became important to their cause, I’ve no doubt.”

She shakes her head. “I didn’t — I don’t do it to feel _important._ But I believe in the cause,” she says finally, simply. 

“Enough to see these twenty men dead.” 

Her jaw tightens as she looks away. “I didn’t think — they aren’t usually so —” Her gaze settles on the bludgeoned mess of the Auxie’s face. “I overheard their patrol plans this morning. I passed it on and signalled when they left the town. I couldn’t think — I can’t think that Padraig would be capable of, of this.” 

“Well, clearly he is.”

She lifts her eyes back to meet his. “People are capable of much more than I ever imagined. I’ve never seen such —” She shakes her head. “I believe in Ireland, but this — this awful brutality — this can’t be the way.”

“Why do you continue, then?”

Molly breathes in, silent for a long moment. “Padraig brought his body home. He didn’t have to, but he did. I have to believe that the Ireland that he sees — that they fight for — is better than this.” 

“At any cost?” Her gaze flicks up to him, then away. 

“Some things have to be worth it, don’t they?”

Sherlock shrugs. “Independence or Empire, you mean?”

“I mean the promise of the future — to, to determine who you are. To make things better.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “That’s a dream you’re sold. I’ve yet to see how killing off whole generations makes _the future_ better.” 

“Your future doesn’t need to be better,” she says heatedly. “You have everything — what do you even know —” The vehemence in her voice startles.

“I don’t —” he starts weakly. 

“Don’t. Just — life isn’t the Big House, and Oxford, and bloody games for all of us.”

“Nasty, brutish, and short?” The words float up in his mind in Mycroft’s voice. Impatient and lecturing; even in Sherlock’s childhood he was determined to teach his younger brother to manipulate the nuances of the world. _The people_ , he would say, in a delicate sneer.

Her lip twists wryly. “Sometimes, yes. And sometimes you have to meet it with something as brutal.”

“Well, they have that down, your _associates._ ”

“Don’t talk to me about associations,” she snaps. “Your John killed a boy, remember?”

“He’s not _my_ John.” She raises her eyebrows. “It’s not as though I’m on their side, either,” he says peevishly.

“That is the most complete shite,” Molly says. “You’re helping them. You can give whatever excuses you’d like, but you’ve chosen your side.” 

Sherlock doesn’t answer. Molly looks down at her hands, which fiddle with the edge of the table, their clean whiteness in stark contrast to the messy, lifeless claw of the Auxie.

“Will you tell him about me?” she says, very quietly.

“John? I don’t — I don’t know,” he says, realising at once that it is true. Molly’s status has enormous bearing on the RIC activities and, indirectly, on Sherlock’s own inquest into the bomb-maker. Yet he finds his inability to predict John’s response unsettling. “Will you continue passing messages?”

“Yes,” she says. “They’ll all be targets, now.” Sherlock nods. “What will you do with me, then? Turn me in to Danielson?” 

“No,” Sherlock says right away. Giving Molly over to the brutal injustice of the official system is unthinkable. 

Molly exhales, shoulders softening. “Thank you,” she says quietly. “I hadn’t quite figured how I fit into your loyalties,” she adds, laughing bitterly. Sherlock’s doesn’t respond, and she purses her lips, goes silent. 

The silence stretches between them until Molly breaks with an uncertain, “Well. Are you going to stay for — for all of this?” She gestures weakly to the bodies. Sherlock nods, and she purses her lips again, peering at him for a long moment before turning to gather together her instruments once more.

++

The work is long and bloody. Molly pays each body professional attention, though he notices her hands do not linger with the care she had given the O’Briens. They catalogue every injury, a barrage of shots, stabs, bludgeons. Something creeps at the back of Sherlock’s mind as he compiles the list, but he lets it remain there, work itself out. He thinks of the injuries Moran had displayed: a bullet to the calf, a graze to the head, either from a shot or a poorly-aimed bayonet.

“Molly, who did you overhear? About the patrol plans?”

She looks up at him, blinking in momentary confusion. “Oh, um. Lieutenant Nathan. Mouthing off, as he — well. I know he’s dead —” She should, his severed legs are in her courtyard — “but I never liked him.”

“You’re far from the only one,” Sherlock says dryly. Not Moran, though letting things slip would be unlike him. But things do come back to Nathan, again and again. His knowledge of Tom Barry and Padraig’s visit to Sherlock; his mouthing off about the patrol; his driving even when he didn’t usually. The fact that he was alone in the cab even though they usually drove two in the front. Yet, he died in the ambush. The tender slowed to a stop before the bomb hit — or at least before it exploded. The angle of the grenade’s trajectory: low and from the side.

“Did you have any other encounters with him? Any other information he let slip that you passed on?”

Molly frowns, thinking. “No — I don’t think so.”

“Think! Are you certain?”

Molly puzzles, hands held before her, dripping blood. “You know that he was the one John fought with? At the dance?” Her voice is cautious, slow. He nods. “He was talking about you, saying — saying some things that aren’t very —” She licks her lips, looks away. “Not very nice,” she concludes.

“I assumed as much,” Sherlock says. 

“No,” Molly says, pained expression crossing her face. “Things about you and, and John.” Sherlock exhales slowly. Molly’s words are of no surprise and yet — yet they still hit his gut painfully. 

“That’s fine, Molly,” he says tightly. “No other _tactical_ details, may I assume?” She shakes her head, blushing crimson. “I’ll require a list of all of the times you passed messages, what information you conveyed, and your knowledge as to what purpose the IRA put it.”

“What? No. No, Sherlock, I’m not turning into one of your informers. You have no right —”

“It’s important, Molly.”

“For what? This isn’t a game, Sherlock, and whatever you’re playing at is dangerous. You’ve built up some big — I don’t know, some investigation in your mind, some elaborate conspiracy. That’s not what’s happening. It just isn’t.”

“It is; you just can’t see! It doesn’t make sense; none of it makes sense.”

“It’s war, Sherlock.” He scoffs; Molly looks at him, with infuriating pity. 

“That isn’t what I meant.” She raises her eyebrows.

“You want things to be complicated, to be clever, to always mean something. Sometimes it’s just humans blundering on, trying their best to do what they think is right.”

“This time there’s more. People are hiding secrets, not just informing or gun running. There’s something else, and when I find the truth —”

“Yes? When you find out, what will you do? You’ll have to trust it to someone.”

Sherlock inhales. Molly tips her head, furrowed lines between her brows and her eyes still full of that hateful pity. It’s too much — her awful tenderness, her awful words — and he slams his fist against the table top. She jumps back. “It’s the truth; that’s enough.”

“No,” Molly says. “No, it’s not.” 

Sherlock turns sharply, strides toward the door. He wants to slam it open, to feel it shake on its hinges and crack against its frame behind him, to bring the whole mortuary down around them. Instead, he says, coldly, to the door, “Send your findings to Norbury once they’re written up,” and departs with a forceful show of calm.

++

It’s well after dark when he returns to Norbury, and his stomach gnaws at him irritably. In the kitchen, the remains of Mummy’s cold dinner are tucked in the icebox, but after a few bites Sherlock shoves it back in disgust. The salty tang of the cheese fills his mouth with the memory of blood; the slick sausages seem ready to burst open, spilling their flesh and fat and innards; the boiled eggs stare blankly back at him. 

He kicks the icebox door closed and turns, startled to see Maxwell waiting patiently at the kitchen door. The old servant is the only person who ever takes Sherlock by surprise, his footsteps more ghostly than corporeal. 

“Pardon, my lord,” he says, his usual superiority suggesting no such deference. “I thought the young lord might wish to know that we had visitors this evening.”

Maxwell calls him _the young lord_ when he wishes to convey his disappointment with Sherlock. “That’s none of my concern; I detest visitors.”

“No, my lord. These were visitors of a rather —” He pauses, coughing delicately. Sherlock rolls his eyes heavenwards. “— rather violent nature. The young lord might care to examine the stables.” Sherlock snaps his jaw shut. Without another word, he yanks open the servant’s entrance and stumbles out into the night.

He blinks against the darkness; clouds still occlude the sky, leaving the night pressing in on him, muffling his senses. Something presses against his hand: Maxwell, handing him a torch. Clicking it on, Sherlock sweeps the beam of light against the front of the stables.

All seems normal for one long moment, before the light catches and glints strangely off one of the windows. The next, the same, and Sherlock realises the panes have been shattered, leaving the light to fracture against the jagged edges which remain. Barrelling inside, he takes the ladder with long-limbed haste. 

The torch’s circle of light offers strange, disjointed vignettes: the settee toppled over, its upholstery slashed and stuffing spilling out; the armoire which holds his chemical store gaping open, the bottles and vials within tipped over and broken, acids and solutions dripping into noxious pools; his glassware store shattered, shards glinting across the floor like so much confetti. The mad aftermath of a violent raid; the battering meant for his person enacted upon his laboratory.

With careful steps, he picks his way across the room. Each footfall brings the grinding crush of broken glass. He holds the torch under his arm, gingerly sifting through the piled boxes next to his desk. The one which held all of the grenade fragments and his written findings on the explosives is gone. He stands, shoving his hands through his hair. The beam of the torch shudders with each movement before falling on the top of his desk.

In a cleared space in the centre of the table lies a scalpel tipped with blood. It gleams even in the low light, the blood liquid, spilling onto the scarred table-top. It isn’t one of his own, but he recognises it. The message comes through.

_Stay away from her. Stop asking questions._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[No One Can Insult Our Flag (1920)](http://youtu.be/1qO7kpSFIEE)**
> 
> **1\. Ambush** Many, though not all, of the facts of the ambush are factual for the November 28, 1920 Kilmichael ambush, in which Tom Barry’s West Cork flying column killed 16 Auxiliaries on patrol, with a further man severely injured, who did eventually recover to survive. Only one Auxiliary escaped and, unlike Moran here, was captured and shot by the IRA. The specific events of the ambush are historically contested, but a few facts are generally agreed upon. At the beginning, Barry stepped out into the road wearing an officer’s uniform, which from far away sufficiently confused the Auxiliaries into thinking he was a British soldier so that they slowed down. The fight began when Barry threw a grenade into the open cab of the first, slowed, lorry. Some of the accounts, Barry’s included, say that the British attempted a “false surrender,” pretending to surrender then opening fire, and that Barry directed his men to ignore subsequent surrender attempts. The brutality of the attack unsettled many of the IRA men, some of whom vomited on the side of the road, and after the shooting ceased Barry made them form-up and drill to restore order.
> 
> The image from chapter 15, which you’ll have seen before and which I’ve put here, too, is of the Kilmichael ambush location, a few years later.
> 
> I’ve embellished, altered, and added a number of details to the events of the ambush as described here and in future chapters, but if you’re interested in the ambush and its impact on British morale there has been plenty written! You might start right at the source, with Barry’s memoirs, which give a lively account.
> 
> **2\. “Whale-skin; he went on about it.”** On a slightly cheerier note, the anecdote about Nathan’s whale-skin boots and his conviction that you can tell a good soldier by his boots comes from _Men at Arms_ , Evelyn Waugh’s excellent satirical novel of WWII. In fact, now might be a good time to mention that if you’re interested in pastoral idylls of earlier chapters and their accompanying homoerotic pining, or some of the complicated Catholic Anglo aristocracy issues, or soldierly disillusionment toward war, you should check out Waugh’s work, specifically _Brideshead Revisited._


	22. Foul Murder

**NEW POLICE ORDER IN MACROOM ******

_1 December 1920_

Whereas foul murders of servants of the Crown have been carried out by disaffected persons, and whereas such persons immediately before the murders appeared to be peaceful and loyal people, but have produced pistols from their pockets, therefore it is ordered that all male inhabitants of Macroom and all males passing through Macroom shall not appear in public with their hands in their pockets. Any male infringing this order is liable to be shot at sight.

_By Order_

AUXILIARY DIVISION, RIC, Macroom Castle

++

They hear the pounding before they round the corner: the steady, angry shot of hammer on nail. On the church steps, two Auxies hold rifles at the ready, and, between them, Colonel Smyth and his clerk nail a proclamation into the door. Its edges catch and flap in the wind, until the clerk pins each corner down and Smyth takes aim, striking the nails with far more force than required. He turns and, seeing John and Hughes in the road, gestures to his clerk, who hurries down the steps to thrust a sheath of paper into each of their hands.

The fresh ink smears against John’s fingertips. The words are roughly centred on the page, their ill-aligned disorder testament to the haste with which the documents were produced. 

“Any male infringing this order is liable to be shot at sight,” Hughes reads. “Finally, my god.” He grins at John, who raises an eyebrow. “Don’t look so dour, Johnny-boy, it’s hunting season!”

Smyth, who has descended the stairs more slowly — aged, somehow, in the day since John called him away from his office — clasps Hughes on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit. The more you shoot, the more I’ll like you, and I assure you no policeman will get in trouble for shooting any man.” 

“Sir,” Hughes says, with a grin and a sloppy salute. 

“I’m having all my men — what’s left of them —” he says darkly — “pass these out in town. To every household and business.” He gestures to the pages they hold. “Let them know, too, there’s news from Dublin to be read in Town Hall Square today, mid-day sharp.” The clerk gives them each a few more, for good measure, and Smyth gestures to his men to make way to the next target of his hammer. 

“This seems like a good idea to you?” John gestures with the papers.

“You never stopped and asked a kraut’s intention before shooting him, did you?”

“Well —” Hughes raises one eyebrow meaningfully. “No, of course not.”

“Well, there you have it. I say we’re long overdue for some proper soldiering. Lets ‘em know we’re serious.”

“Oh, sure, because we were just having them on before.”

Hughes snorts. “Listen,” he says, unexpectedly serious, “it’s not about killing paddies. But if the Crown wants to win this, they’ve got to let us off our leashes.”

John thinks of frustrating patrols, of always chasing after an enemy whose knowledge of the area leaves the soldiers blind in comparison. In the war, they had skirmishes, they had battles, they had bombings and nightly artillery shelling; but they never contended with the sort of back-footed, defencive position the RIC continually maintains, always waiting for an ambush to strike. To have some latitude in acting first, no matter how crudely delivered and narrowly scoped, feels liberatory. 

They knock at a few dozen doors but receive little response. Many proclamations, therefore, they shove roughly under doors and through mail slots, to greet the footsteps of their inhabitants once they return or — more likely — decide it is safe to creep downstairs. John has no doubt that news will travel quickly enough by mouth, so he doesn’t worry. 

++

Indeed, at mid-day Town Hall Square is filled. Danielson and Smyth stand together on the stairs, an uncomfortable foot’s distance between them, and a line of Auxies stand between them and the crowd, another half-dozen across the entrance to the castle opposite. John, Hughes, and the rest of the RIC mill around the perimeter, eyes to any shifty characters. John knocks the tip of his rifle against the elbow of a sallow-faced young man who slouches against a lamp post in front of the pub, hands shoved in his pockets and hat tipped low. The boy scowls at him but straightens up, waving his hands impudently at John in an over-emphatic show of cooperation. 

John paces the edges of the crowd; with his every movement, people inch away, some daring to shoot disdainful looks in his direction but more cowed, huddling in small groups with hushed voices. He notices Sherlock immediately, as much for his dishevelled cap of curls and tight-buttoned greatcoat as for the way he stands, immobile, as the crowd flows and moves around him. 

“Martial law,” Sherlock says as John approaches.

“What?” John asks, in reflex; the glare Sherlock gives him telegraphs annoyance as much as impatience. “The news from Dublin,” John says after a beat.

“We had a telegram from Mycroft last night, of course,” Sherlock says, “but it’ll be in the evening papers too.”

“It’s about time,” John says, recalling Hughes’s words earlier. Sherlock tips up one eyebrow but doesn’t respond.

Smyth’s voice calling the crowd to order sounds above the crowd. The people assembled take a few moments to settle; even from across the square, John can see the peevish, impatient look cross Smyth’s face as he calls out again. Finally, though, the square hushes enough that he can read out Parliament’s statement.

“Effective immediately, on this day the tenth of December 1920, the Parliament of the United Kingdom, under the Restoration of Order in Ireland Act and with the Royal Assent of His Majesty King George V, declares the counties of Cork, Limerick, Kerry, and Tipperary to be under martial law.” 

The crowd erupts in jeering cries and angry shouts, pressing forward up to the line of soldiers, who raise their rifles in a barricade. Though restive, the unarmed townspeople fall back, some self-protective instinct resisting the massacre threatened by the gleaming barrels of the Lee-Enfields. 

Smyth shoves the statement into his breast pocket and nods to his men, who immediately push forward to clear a way through the crowd. Smyth strides through, Danielson at a distance, and the men close ranks behind them. Across the square, Hughes catches John’s eye and jerks his head toward the side streets. Understanding, John circles back to patrol the narrow, close byways into the square as the crowd disperses. Sherlock follows, to the side and only half a step behind John, eyes scanning the crowd continually as they walk. Most hurry by, eyes to the cobblestones, and John’s Lee-Enfield encourages any who might be inclined to shove to instead give berth. The square empties, slowly.

“What else did you find out?” John says, eyes still on the diminishing crowd. Sherlock doesn’t answer; John glances over to see his brow furrowed. “Sherlock?”

“Much of the most brutal damage was done postmortem. After death,” he adds.

“Yes, I know — What do you mean?”

“With the exception of Lieutenant Nathan, all the men appeared to be killed by gunshot. The bayonet wounds were — superfluous.” 

John swallows; for a moment, he stops seeing the ordinary townspeople in front of him, but instead the Kilmichael valley again. The bodies, their raw wounds, gaping and deep, and the necessary force behind each. “That’s not battle,” he spits. “That’s mutilation.” He grips tighter to the butt of his rifle. 

“I don’t see that it makes much difference —” 

John cuts him off. “Much difference? It’s — it’s —” He struggles to grasp a word that makes sense; it’s not honourable, certainly, not right, not accepted. But the revulsion which permeates John’s gut has little to do with honour and much more with the sensation of a bayonet sliding into flesh, with the knowledge of the hissing, gurgling sound of a severed throat, with the memory of blood flowing over a gripped knife, sticky and hot on his fist. All done for duty; lives taken to keep his own. Not for fun — or hatred. 

He wrenches his gaze to Sherlock, focusing finally. Sherlock’s narrowed eyes search his expression. John shakes his head. “It’s nothing. It’s just not done,” he shrugs, aware of the weakness of his words. Sherlock opens his mouth, preparing to respond, when a gunshot cracks through the air.

“That way —” Sherlock points and takes off, John a beat behind him. The crowd, now only a mere few dozen people, splinters and frays as people run, as John and Sherlock shove through them. John shouts to Hughes as he passes, a gesture serving to communicate his intention to pursue, and Hughes nods and begins to call out to the crowd, his management largely ignored as the panicked people dissipate. 

They skirt the front of the castle, reaching the edge of the square just as another two shots, quick together, sound; Sherlock hesitates a moment, John bumping into his side with unchecked momentum, before turning to run down an alley. 

A figure bends over, nearly touching the wall, at the corner of the alley. John only just has time to register dark tweed, a pulled-low cap, before the figure startles at their footsteps and takes off, toward the church just beyond the side street. As they approach, John thinks the heap in the corner is a pile of rubbish, old rags and broken bottles; then, though, the dark mass resolves into green wool, the glinting he took for broken glass into gold buttons. He drops to his knees to tilt the man’s face up, but the uniform — bars at its shoulders, insignia on its peaked cap — is unmistakable. 

Danielson is already dead. His eyes stare glassily at John, his body a limp weight against John’s probing hands. His chest is a mangled mass, blood still pumping sluggishly against the green. Releasing him, John grits his jaw, wipes his hands against his trousers — heavy brownish stains bearing little of the just-extinguished life in Danielson’s blood — and shoves to standing. A nod at Sherlock and they’re off again, Sherlock directing them with jerky movements and curt shouts, relying on the map built up in his head.

Around a corner, down the street, ducking through alleys and the narrow passages behind buildings; skidding across a slick of beer behind the pub, where they just catch sight of their pursued as his boot disappears behind a corner. They follow him down a stretch of road as he weaves, darting enough that even if John slowed to shoot he’d have a difficult time sighting his aim. John shouts a few times, some dim remembrance of his perfunctory Dublin training inspiring an attempt at police authority, but is not surprised when he is ignored.

He jumps the fence into the churchyard, taking advantage of the gravestones as cover, leading them on a mazy route through the pitted, age-worn monuments. John pulls his pistol and takes a shot — two — but they ping uselessly off of stone. The man rounds the corner of the church; to their left the river chugs sluggishly, offering no cover and sucking mud, and to their right stands a narrow street of houses. He’ll continue straight, then, into the fields to the north. Bare and dry in the harshness of winter, they nonetheless nestle up to the dense groves of trees which line the river, and in which more than one rebel has hidden. 

As they come around to the back of the church, John sees their pursuant, indeed, jump over the churchyard hedge into the meadow. They’re almost on him when he takes a tight, unexpected turn down the back of the row of houses, leaping over a garden fence and gaining some ground as they overshoot the turn. He’s just over the top of the second fence as they get back on his tail, trampling over winter-sleeping garden beds and bedraggled squares of grass, clamouring up and over rickety iron tables and ivy-covered fences.

Sherlock takes each garden fence with grace, single-handed hops and gymnastic climbs; John follows with gritted determination even as his bandoleer and rifle thud against his torso, impeding his process. He rolls over the top of a stone wall, landing heavily in the dirt, to see the man scrambling desperately at the ivied trellis opposite. Sherlock catches the man up, gripping tightly to his trouser legs to pull him back down. It could be comical — farcical, even — the man’s kicking feet catching Sherlock in the chest; Sherlock’s determined grip on his calves. 

Sherlock wins the struggle: the two men fall to a heap together, grappling and kicking, and John lifts his Webley and steps forward just as the stranger shoves away enough to rise. Their eyes meet — the man’s hand falls to his hip — John’s finger tightens — Sherlock cries out — the trigger thuds back, kick recoiling up John’s steady arm.

The man falls, his body collapsing half on top of Sherlock, who hasn’t risen but instead stares, wide-eyed, at the neat red hole in the centre of the man’s forehead. Taking a few strides forward, John shoves the dead man to one side with his boot, offering a hand to Sherlock, who blinks up at him for a long, unsettling moment before grasping it to stand.

On the ground, the body sprawls, spread-limbed like the bullet was an electric shock. His tweed jacket falls away, revealing a holstered pistol. John blinks at it: entirely expected, and yet —

He snorts, which turns to a guffaw; in a moment he’s leaning down, hands braced against his knees, trying to catch his breath from the irrepressible giggles which assail their way up his throat. Tilting his head, he catches Sherlock’s eye; Sherlock looks puzzled. No, more than that — confused, even. John heaves in a breath, another, and pushes to standing. 

“It’s just —” he gestures at the body. “He reached for his pockets, you know; I didn’t think I’d be using this morning’s proclamation quite so quickly.” He hiccoughs another laugh, but Sherlock’s continued silence is enough to bring him to clear his throat, settle the strange, manic pressure in his chest. 

“I knew him,” Sherlock says, staring at the body.

“What?”

“We grew up together. I — his name is Padraig McCoy.” His tone turns brisk, collected, and when he glances up at John his expression is once more inscrutable. 

“He — I’m sorry, Sherlock, but you saw him — he shot Danielson, he —”

Sherlock jerks away, though John hadn’t reached to touch him. “Don’t treat me like — of course I saw.” His lip twists into a sneer. “I’ve no doubt you know the procedure by now; take the body to the undertaker’s, declare him entirely in the wrong, cover your tracks neatly.”

“I — this was a clean shot. Whatever you’re implying —”

“I’m not _implying_ anything,” Sherlock says, the cracks in his neat facade of control beginning to show in the wild darting of his eyes, in the tightness of his jaw, in the bobbing swallow of his throat. John looks from Sherlock to the body.

“What do you mean, you knew him. What were you —” They’re about the same age, it would seem; though the face is lifeless, blank, the man’s — Padraig’s — coppery hair glints in the light, his ungainly sprawl not hiding the breadth of his shoulders, of his chest.

“Oh, that is delightful. Jealousy, John?”

John jerks his gaze back up to Sherlock. “I’m not — jesus, Sherlock, I’m not fucking —”

“Of course.” Sherlock turns tightly on his heel, paces the narrow breadth of the garden. “We were friends, of a sort,” he offers, finally. “He and Seamus Hooper —” He presses his lips together, cutting off his words, and says nothing more. 

++

John won’t let anyone else bear the news. He knocks at the door to Danielson’s quarters and waits. Behind it, he can hear the tinny whine of the wireless and the splash of water, then footsteps drawing nearer to the door. Mrs Danielson opens it, still drying her hands on her apron, and greets him with a brisk smile. “Constable?”

“Mrs Danielson, mum. I —” He resists the urge to twist his cap in his hands like a guilty schoolboy, ensures he holds her eye, hoping there’s sympathy enough in his face. “I’m sorry, mum, I’ve some very bad news. After the announcement today, the Sergeant was shot by a lone rebel.”

Her hands still, apron held limply between her fingers. “Shot? Is he — where is he? At the doctor’s?” She begins to push past John, into the corridor, but he grasps her arm.

“I’m so sorry. He — he was killed. He was already dead when I found them — found him.” He braces, expecting her to sag against him, to weaken with the sudden shock of grief, but instead she jerks her arm out of his grasp and pulls away, drawing her body in. 

“Them?” she asks, her voice blank and flat. Her every muscle, tense and taut, seems to nearly vibrate.

“The shooter was still there. I pursued him and shot him.” She blinks at him. “He’s dead.”

“Well, that’s one thing you’re good for, then. Since you don’t seem to be able to keep people alive.”

“I — the Sergeant —”

“The Sergeant was getting on fine before your lot arrived. Before you started shooting people and burning houses and — He was respected here, you know? Before you —” She cuts herself off, biting her lip and turning away. John holds back any responses about the efficacy of that respect, uncertain of what to offer.

“Mrs Danielson, maybe we should go inside? Have you sit down?” He lifts a hand again, and she flinches away.

“Damn it, what are you good for? What are any of you English bastards good for? They told us — they said it would be over in a few months —” 

“I’m sorry, I —”

“Stop,” she shouts, her voice harsh and raw with the tears she doesn’t shed. “He’s at Hooper’s, then,” she states, after a heavy swallow. John nods. “I’m going to see my husband. I don’t want you in my sight when I return.” John dips his chin and stands aside. He’d rather she go with an escort, but he’ll settle for sending Finnegan to follow at a distance. He waits a few beats before stepping down the corridor into the barracks proper, where the rest of the force stands, uncertainly.

“Finnegan, follow Mrs Danielson and wait for her at the mortuary. If anyone you doubt in the slightest comes near her, shoot on sight. Hughes, Blake, with me. The rest of you secure the premises and patrol until we return.”

++

The Auxiliaries have had the same thought. In the town square, John, Hughes, and Blake meet up with Moran and half of First Platoon. Moran leans heavily on a stick and a bandage tucks against his temple under the brim of his tam, but his face is grim and his voice as booming as ever. 

“Smyth’s declaring curfew,” he says by way of greeting. The square is deserted, but dim sounds emerge from the pub. “Search of all public and private premises and seizure of any contraband.” 

John nods. “Danielson’s dead,” he says. The Auxies with Moran murmur, and Moran himself dips his chin, expression dark. 

“Damn. He was respected.” Despite the Sergeant’s mild ways, all the force knows that lingering good-will for Danielson’s even-handed dealings had, until recently, afforded them less trouble than outright animosity might have. “Do you know who?”

John nods. “I shot him. Dead. He was a member of the West Cork, though, and I’m sure wasn’t working alone.”

“Let’s see what we can find,” Moran says. “Watson, you take the west; Bennings, Aldershot, and Foster go north; the rest of you with me to the east. Search every house, every person.”

++

They give a perfunctory knock at each door before bursting in. Inhabitants they line up, at gunpoint, against a wall, and pat down: men, women, children. Tossing over mattresses, rooting through drawers, wrenching open cupboards, they find stashes of food, money, letters in most cases. Children cry; women protest; men yell. Each house takes minutes only before they’re onto the next.

John shoves at the door; its red lacquer the shiny crimson of wet blood in the low light. Inside, he barks his orders: “Everyone, against the wall. Hands above your heads. Up, up, come on now.” Two young women and one elderly woman who cannot rise from her chair are the only inhabitants of the house. John and Hughes search the women; the one in front of John pulls the neck of her dressing gown tighter and glares at him, but reluctantly lifts her arm when he nudges her side with the tip of his Webley. In the corner, a baby wails from inside a small cot. 

Finnegan guards the family while Hughes and John toss the upstairs. He thinks it will be more of the same: fripperies and love notes, practical winter wear and some sequestered cans of food, but the unexpectedly hollow sound his boot makes while walking to the bed promises more. He kicks the corner of the rug up and presses his heel against the floorboard, which gives under his weight. Lifting it out of place, he roots into the dark space below.

“Hughes,” he bellows out; Hughes ducks his head around the door frame from the other room. John lifts a handful of bullets and grins. They’re none of them the bullet that killed Danielson, but he’ll stop them from killing anyone else.

From the hold, they unload two bags of bullets, a brace of grenades — from Dublin, John thinks — and two pistols. Dumping the lot into an emptied needle-work basket, John and Hughes trample down the stairs, where Finnegan still holds the two young women at gunpoint. In her chair, the elderly woman trembles slightly, eyes never leaving Finnegan’s hand.

“We found quite an unexpected little bundle upstairs. Protecting yourselves?” John holds up the basket, from which protrudes the point of one of the guns. The young women glance at each other, paling. Women aren’t easier, precisely, to interrogate, but John and Hughes both know that unraveling the allegiances of women who provide safe houses, or hold weapons, or deliver food can direct them toward a whole network of rebels. Women’s loyalty isn’t always to their brothers-in-arms; they have more to protect.

“You just tell us where you got them,” Hughes says, “and we’ll leave you be.” They won’t, of course; the women will stand trial for treason. 

Neither says a word. “No?” Hughes lifts his pistol and points the barrel at the chest of one of the women. With each shallow rise of her breath, the tip nearly grazes her breast. “A name, that’s all we need.” Her lip trembles, her lashes flutter down as she looks at the gun, but still she doesn’t say a word.

Still aiming his pistol, Hughes reaches with his other hand to grasp the woman’s wrists. Narrow, they fit in his grip, held tightly as he wrenches her away from the wall. Jerking his head in her direction, Hughes says, “Watson, her hair.”

John takes up her long braid in his palm. Damp, still, from her evening wash, and warm against his skin. His finger brushes against the nape of her neck; she trembles. With his other hand, John hefts his knife from its holder at his waist and snugs it up to her scalp, pulling her hair away so the skin tenses and prickles. Stifling her heaving breaths, the woman stays very still against the blade.

“I don’t want to do this,” John says. His fingers twist into her plait; her hair is soft. This close, he can smell the lavender of her soap. “Just tell us what we need to know. Who gave you the bullets and guns? Why are you holding them?”

Her head shakes, minutely. John slides the blade an inch, feeling a few tendrils go slack and fall against the back of his hand. “Just tell us,” he says again, and pulls the blade back. More hair falls loose, and the woman swallows a sob. “Fine,” John says as she stays silent. He yanks the plait back, jerking her head, and saws at it, until tears run down her trembling cheeks and he holds the limp hank of hair aloft for her to see. A rivulet of blood tracks down the back of her bare neck. 

He tosses the plait to the floor, where it unravels into a grotesque tangle. At the end, a crimson ribbon slips off the loose strands. “Finish her,” Hughes says, and John tangles his fingers in the hair that remains and, with a few brusque movements, hacks the rest off until her scalp shows beneath the ragged patches. He drops each handful; they litter her trembling shoulders and float around her body to settle at her feet. 

Finishing, he brushes his hands off on his trouser legs. “Would you like to tell us what we need to know?” he asks, all jovial smiles. Hughes taps the end of the revolver against her temple and she cries out, her shout mimicked by the baby in the corner.

“And yourself?” John turns to the other woman. Sisters, no doubt, by their shared brows and the tears which track down both faces. She stares straight at him and says nothing. He makes quicker work of her hair, not bothering to draw it out as he slices it away from her skull in brusque jerks of his knife. Even if they say nothing now, their heads will be a reminder, a warning, to all who see them. 

John brushes his hands off again, tucking his knife away. He’s ready to give the order to take the lot back to barracks when the baby wails again. 

John smiles. “Which one of you is the mother?” The women glance at each other, still refusing to answer, but with the nervous look given by the one nearer to him, the second to be shorn, he knows. Striding over to the cot, he lifts the baby from its wrappings. He knows little about children; with no younger siblings, he’s never had the opportunity to learn how they grow, how to care for them, but he tucks the little one in the crook of his arm.

“I won’t hurt him,” he says, looking its mother in the eye. He rocks it, gently, and it begins to quiet. “Now, just tell me, who is the baby’s father? Hmm?” She bites her lip, says nothing. “There’s no sign of a man living here. Is he dead?” She gazes straight ahead. “Not dead, then?” John gives another glance to the room around them, eyes falling on the mantle. He steps over to it and, yes, just as he’d expected: a small gilt frame, with a wedding photo. He doesn’t recognise the groom, but he wears a harp pin on his lapel. John lifts the frame. “I’ll just take this with me. And if you’d both oblige us and dress, you’ll be making a visit to the barracks tonight.”

“My baby —”

John tilts his head, looks down at the infant. Though it has quieted, its body still trembles with hiccoughs and tears track down its cheeks. “Of course,” he says, and holds it out. She hesitates only a moment before snatching it to her breast. 

“Our mother can’t travel,” says the other woman defiantly. Hughes still holds his gun to her chest, though his grip loosens a bit. 

“We’ll send a car for her,” John says brightly. By her trembling silence, he doubts they’ll get anything out of the old woman, but her daughters seem stubborn enough to make a fuss if she’s left alone. 

By the time they escort their captives to the barracks and lock them in the cells, then send a car round for the old woman, who is installed in the sitting room with a guard at the door, night has truly fallen. The city hushes under the rise of the moon, the pubs cleared out and their patrons sent home. John and Hughes return to the square to meet up with the Auxiliaries again.

They’re laughing, jovial, having rustled up two families of collaborators themselves and confiscated the entire stocks of both pub cellars. Hughes theatrically recounts their own raid, giving John a far more sinister air than was probably necessary, but his impersonation soon has them all, John included, laughing. 

“So he cradles the babe in his arm like a sack of flour — like the butt of his Lee-Enfield, come to think of it. All precious and quiet-like. And the mum, my god. If she hadn’t been so scared John would wring her babe’s neck no matter what she said, she’d have spilt it all.”

“Might have over-done it,” John says, with mock humility. Hughes claps him on the shoulder and continues his story; to hear him tell it, they’ve a harem in their cells now, pretty maids quaking at the prospect of their return. 

“Less pretty with their hair shorn off like sheep,” he says off-hand.

“Curfew’s on indefinitely,” Moran says, once the stories have died down. “We’re doubling patrols and doing searches of the forest until we find the column.” John nods; that’s what he would have suggested. Moran looks at him expectantly, and he has the sudden realisation that there’s no one to command them similarly. 

“We’ll increase our patrols, too,” he says. He glances at Hughes, who nods. “And offer support for any raids or ambushes you plan. We can cover town while your men are out on the roads.” Moran eyes him for a moment before agreeing, and with that, John is the de facto leader of his men. 

“Hey!” calls one of the Auxies from the steps of the Town Hall. Aldershot, John thinks. He holds aloft one of the proclamations from earlier in the day. Crowding over, the group watches as he flips it and scrawls text across the blank back, then shoves it back onto the nail.

MACROOM BEWARE  
 _If in the vicinity a policeman is shot, three of the leading Sinn Feiners will be shot. In the event that members of the Sinn Fein party are not available, five sympathisers will be killed._  
 _We will not lie down while our comrades are shot in cold blood by the filth of Ireland._  
 _This is not coercion — it is an eye for an eye._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[Martial Law in Ireland (1920)](http://youtu.be/E-L3zWmkUxM)**
> 
> Long notes for a long chapter!
> 
> **1\. NEW POLICE ORDER IN MACROOM** This is the historical text of the proclamation posted by the Auxiliaries in Macroom after the Kilmichael Ambush.
> 
> **2\. The more you shoot, the more I’ll like you.** The real-life Lieutenant-Colonel Smyth, who was Divisional Commander of the RIC for Munster, rather than Commander of C Company as I’ve portrayed him, gave a speech to the Listowel RIC in June 1920, to bring those constables to heel after they mutanied and refused to hand over control to the military. Though there is no reliable verbatim source for the words he spoke, the following speech was widely reported in the British press and, based on the content of future speeches by Smyth, is likely not far from what was said. It’s long, but I’m reproducing it in full to bring across the sort of attitude that was passed down from command to the RIC and military forces.
> 
> “Well, men, I have something of interest to tell you: something I’m sure you would not want your wives to hear….Now, men, Sinn Fein has had all the sport up to the present, and we are going to have the sport now. The police are not in sufficient strength to do anything but hold their barracks. This is not enough, for as long as we remain on the defensive, so long will Sinn Fein have the whip hand. We must take the offensive, and beat Sinn Fein with its own tactics…
> 
> If a police barracks is burned or if the barracks already occupied is not suitable, then the best house in the locality is to be commandeered, the occupants thrown into the gutter. Let them die there — the more the merrier. Police and military will patrol the country at least five nights a week. They are not to confine themselves to the main roads, but make across the country, lie in ambush and, when civilians are seen approaching, shout ‘Hands up!’ Should the order not be immediately obeyed, shoot and shoot with effect. If the persons approaching carry their hands in their pockets, or are in any way suspicious-looking, shoot them down.
> 
> You may make mistakes occasionally and innocent persons may be shot, but that cannot be helped, and you are bound to get the right parties some time. The more you shoot, the better I will like you, and I assure you no policeman will get in trouble for shooting any man.”
> 
> The real-life C. Company Commander, Buxton Smith, on the other hand, struggled in his position and the aftermath of the ambush. He once lamented that he found it difficult to control the men under his command, who became restless in the face of constant possible attack, stating, “I can trust no one. Already I have lost twenty-five of my men, and they are getting hard to hold.” He committed suicide in London in 1922.
> 
> **3\. Martial law** Martial law was declared for most of southern Ireland on 10 December 1920, and met with relief by many of those in command of the Auxiliaries/Tans. Sir Henry Wilson, Chief of the Imperial General Staff of the Army, wrote that martial law was “the beginning of the Government governing.” As an amusing aside, Wilson also urged concentrating troops in countries under the Empire, rather than trying to make post WWI peace in other countries; such efforts to make peace, he said, was “like buggery: once you take to it, you cannot stop.” LOL.
> 
> **3\. MACROOM BEWARE** The final notice is a paraphrase of a similar notice posted by B &Ts in Drogheda:
> 
> _Drogheda Beware_  
>  If in the vicinity a policeman is shot, five of the leading Sinn Feiners will be shot.  
> It is not coercion — it is an eye for an eye.  
> We are not drink-maddened savages as we have been described by the Dublin rags. We are not out for loot.  
> We are inoffensive to women. We are as humane as other Christians, but we have restrained ourselves too long.  
> Are we too lie down while our comrades are being shot in cold blood by the corner boys and ragamuffins of Ireland?  
> We say ‘Never’, and all the inquiries in the world will not stop our desire for revenge.  
> Stop the shooting of the police, or we will lay low every house that smells of Sinn Fein.  
> Remember Balbriggan.  
> (By Order) Black and Tans 


	23. Midnight

He hadn’t followed Padraig’s body to the mortuary. Resolutely, he does not allow his thoughts to linger on Molly’s confession, on her autopsy table, barely given time to dry from the blood and gore of the ambush, now holding a man once his friend. Her friend, too; her contact and nearly her brother; if times had been different, perhaps her lover.

Parked in the front drive, the motorcar sits with its doors and boot open; Maxwell bustles out of the open door to the house with a suitcase under each arm, which he arthritically lifts into the boot. At Sherlock’s approach, Maxwell bobs his head impatiently. 

“If the young lord would make some haste in packing. Lady Holmes desires to depart by the evening ferry.”

“Depart? Don’t be ridiculous.” Maxwell merely blinks and hurries back up the stairs with more haste than his bent figure would belie. 

Bursting into the library, Sherlock finds Mummy seated at her desk, blotting then folding a note. “Sherlock, dear, do pack up. We leave in half an hour’s time.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Sherlock says again, for it is ridiculous, fleeing like scared infants. To Mycroft, no doubt. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“Oh, you are,” Mummy says blandly. Dribbling wax onto the fold of her letter, she presses her seal into the puddle steadily. Rising, she adds, “I’ll not tolerate any argument, young man. Your brother has it all arranged.”

“I’m an adult, Mummy, I don’t heel when Mycroft calls.”

Brushing past him, Mummy sighs. “I don’t understand why my boys can’t get along.”

“Because your eldest is an insufferable tyrant,” Sherlock retorts, following her up the stairs. 

“I can’t leave you here on your own,” Mummy says, stepping into her bedchamber. The wardrobe gapes open, clothes spilling out to tumble to the floor, with more spread over the bed. The day girl is nowhere to be found. Folding haphazardly, Mummy thrusts day gowns and evening beads alike into her trunk. 

“Maxwell will be here,” Sherlock argues. Mummy purses her lips, and Sherlock goes for his master strike. “What if the rebels decide to take up residence? They’d think twice if a member of the family were still here.” He has no idea if that is true, and by the worried glance Mummy gives out the window, toward the stables, he knows she doesn’t either.

“Sherlock —”

“Mummy, I can’t go to London. I’m needed here.”

She sighs, sitting at the edge of the bed. As a tall woman, it is only when seated that she looks up to her boys, and though Sherlock remembers the childish pleasure he took in reaching her eye level, her imploring gaze now unsettles. “Sherlock, you must stop playing at this detective work. It’s not seemly.”

Sherlock grits his teeth. “It’s not playing — it’s — Mummy, I can help, I —” I can’t run away, he doesn’t say. His fingers clench into the damp wool of his greatcoat. 

She takes a deep breath. “I want daily telegrams. And keep the doors locked.” A flood of relief hits Sherlock’s gut, and he nods eagerly. He’d agree to the return of his wretched childhood nanny if he could stay. Pushing heavily off the bed, with unexpected age, Mummy cups his cheek gently. “Be careful, my boy.”

“Of course, Mummy.”

++

He waves them off at three sharp and immediately climbs up to the stables loft. He’d completed only a half-hearted clean-up, and though the floor is safely cleared of glass, the settee lies toppled in a corner, its guts eviscerated, and an acid puddle erodes the floor under the chemical store. Sherlock has placed the bloody scalpel at the corner of his desk, in sight, and he glances at it now as he pulls out a stack of onionskin paper and a pencil. 

The pencil he sharpens roughly with a penknife, then sets to making lists. All the clues he’s heard, the movements he’s tracked, since the night he and John watched the transfer of explosives. He’s held them in his mind, not daring to set anything to paper, but now he must make sense of it. Other paper he tears into pieces, putting down names, dates, places, stacking and arranging them until his desk is covered, then still writing more. The rebels had ignored his tattered box of newspaper clippings — the Times, the Independent, the Dublin Evening Standard, even the RIC’s Weekly Summary. These he pulls out, correlating each clipping with more dates, more names, inscribing the fragile paper with his own notes and comments, and only when the box is empty and the desk bears an unruly array of disorderly piles does he take a deep breath and look up.

Glancing around the room, he stands and, with grit-teethed force, shoves the armoire out of the way, clearing the gable wall. The only wall without windows, it offers a broad, empty expanse, and, finding some nails, Sherlock begins to fill it.

++

Sherlock steps back from the wall, blinking against the falling dark of night. Across the gable wall, a fragile web emerges: his notations carefully arrayed and connected by a length of cord. In the gloom of the loft, the white cord glows dully, a fragmentary trace barely emerging from the mass of newsprint and the yellowed gossamer flakes of onionskin. He’d discovered his oil lamp tipped and shattered after the raid, but a few candles were left untouched, and these he lights to set upon stacked boxes and bits of furniture near the wall. 

His map roughly estimates that of the island: Jim O’Donovan and what little rumour Eva had been willing to part with on the middle right, in Dublin; a huddle of newspaper clippings and notes in the bottom left, for Kilmichael; meandering threads representing likely movements of people, communications, weapons, and money. The barracks attack in Ballyhooly; the race course at Mallow; the exchange of explosives along the Sleaveen road. 

He pins up his pilfered copies of the photographs taken at the ambush; their grey, grainy surfaces reveal little detail, but they serve to spark his own memory. Something eludes him, something he’s been chasing since he stood in the mortuary, washing each wound. He shakes his head and focuses again on the image of the bomb-shattered Crossley. The bomb had taken out a large hole in the cab, blasting through Nathan’s torso from the side. Thrown low. The side door, open but largely undamaged. As though — as though the grenade had been thrown from within. 

From within — from — Sherlock pulls another photograph from the wall, ripping it away from the nail. In the image, the bodies splayed across the ground melt into the mud, a uniform, indistinct grey. Blood soaks across their chests, throats, legs, black like spilt ink. Sherlock doesn’t need the photograph, however, as he calls up each body in his mind, their wounds vivid and bright and clear. In the battlefield, obscured by blood and rain, the mutilated bodies represented a massacre, fuelled by anger and revenge; in the crisp utility of his mind, though, they become collections of data. Again and again, the same left-to-right pull, the same drag just at the end. By the same hand.

From within. 

Molly, of course, cannot be their only local informant; sympathies and loyalties run deep throughout Macroom. With a connection inside the RIC, an informant slowly leaking relevant movements and plans, the IRA could plan not only an offencive campaign but a strategic one. Ambushes not only incidental or lucky but dramatic successes at key points in the conflict. Kilmichael, only a week after the events the newspapers have taken to calling ‘Bloody Sunday,’ allows both sides a touchstone. A reason for martial law for the Crown, a terrific show of power for the IRA. More so if the overwhelming victory became a bloodthirsty massacre, no matter by whose hand.

Of course, there is only one likely suspect, only one confirmed survivor, but Sherlock has nothing but conjecture. Though Sherlock is certain of his involvement, Moran cannot be directly linked to even the horse racing scheme, never mind a massive chemical explosive manufacture and distribution program, nor the treasonous act of informing. 

Tossing the photographs down, Sherlock paces up the loft. Up, then back down; no matter the strength of his stomping feet, he cannot conjure up another piece of evidence from the mass of words and images spread across his wall. With a quick, decisive movement, he turns on his heel and drops down the ladder.

The moon gives enough light to guide his feet across the meadow, leaving the dry, crunching grass glinting silver. The drooping tips, cold with damp turning to frost, brush his fingers. 

When he arrives, the hives are quiet. He brushes dry leaves from the tops and away from the entrance, his hand leaving tracks through the finely settled dust, evidence of his care against the encroachment of nature. A faint warmth buzzes under his palms, the hibernating life of the hive persisting despite the winter. It will need feeding soon, to replace the honey he’d scooped away at the end of the summer.

He lets his hand linger, though the sleeping bees need his help little. His father had taught him to follow the cycles of the seasons, the cycles of the bees, to scoop out the pale golden honey of the spring, the sunshine yellow of high summer, the milky blond cream that comes in the last harvest of autumn. Their regularity he finds comforting, and unsettling: the graceful smoothness of their concerted movements, the geometric neatness of their creations serving to remind him of all that might be knowable, attainable, and yet still remains beyond the reckoning of human knowledge. 

A wind kicks through the narrow copse of trees which surrounds the nestled hives. Jerking at the collar of his greatcoat, Sherlock huddles into it, shoulders up to his jaw. Chilled, he takes a last look at the quiet hives, then turns to stalk back up to the house. He clamours through the ditch of the ha-ha, its depth momentarily obscuring the glimmering light of the moon, all darkness until he climbs back out. Across the meadow, the dark house looms, its fires banked, its lamps extinguished. Sherlock had registered the return of the motor sometime in the evening, and though he had difficulty imagining the man in the vulnerability of sleep, Maxwell no doubt now slumbered in his chamber at the top of the house.

Leaping the fence into the front garden — unkempt and straggling, now, in its untended winter state — Sherlock tunes his mind back to his problem, to his map. With each footstep toward the house, he jumps from one pin to the next, across his clippings and photographs and notes, and is traversing the tangle around Kilmichael when the dark sky lights up.

The blast blows Sherlock back, to tumble over a rosebush. For one long moment, he thinks the stinging of his skin — his hands, his face — is the scratching of the bush’s thorns, dry and sharp in their winter bareness. Blinking open, his eyes attempt to focus, but all is blinding brilliance, crimson light. He rubs at them — grit, and something wet against his knuckles — and tries again. The outline of the house takes shape, bulky and looming and misshapen, black against the flames which burst from within. 

His skin prickles — hot, too hot — as he stumbles to his feet. Fire licks out of the burst windows of the front foyer to wrap around the columns of the portico, a fervent embrace. The house still stands, largely: a mask-like facade with gaping, scarlet eyes. Sherlock steps, clumsy on his feet. Pain hits his ankle; he tests it, dimly cataloguing the sensations as he shuffles forward. Sprain, likely, not a break, he thinks, gingerly moving around the rose bed. 

He can only move forward, toward the heat of the house; the fire’s brilliance overtakes even the moon, harsh against the encroaching darkness of the night. He has only dim purpose: Maxwell, sleeping in the empty servant’s quarters; his books; Father’s papers; the house. The house, the house — even as he moves forward, bricks crumble and fall, the accumulated fragility of years, the wear of generations, proving too vulnerable against the punishing heat. 

As he reaches the edge of the garden, another explosion hits: glass blasts out of the windows of the east wing as one wall collapses. Sherlock stumbles back, tripping over his own feet as a section of the roof falls in, crumbling into the narrow attic housing the servants’ quarters. The servants’ quarters — housing a servant, singular, and stalwart and — Sherlock hopes he was asleep, he realises with a sudden sick rush of nausea. He didn’t — he never meant — Maxwell was never supposed to be mixed up in this, and now he’s — 

Sherlock’s teeth hurt. His eyes hurt, his face, his skin, his lungs. He gulps, swallows down bitter, smoky air; he fists his hands against the wool of his overcoat; he rocks forward onto his toes; he does nothing. He cannot move, cannot act: the fire shoves against his senses, against every instinct, but it would require less than Sherlock’s quick-working mind to know that the damage was already far beyond the reach of his singular hands. 

The third explosion comes finally, and the closed-off west wing blasts open, its side wall shattered. Repairs to the masonry have been put off for a generation, the empty ballroom that spans the first storey closed up, its chandeliers wrapped in ghostly, dust-drawn sheets. The thought of their crystal beads falling, shattering, shocks him back into his body, and, grimacing against the pain, he dashes off around the house to the stables.

Skidding in the gravel as he rounds the corner, heat punishing, blistering, through his wool overcoat, he takes a coughing, gasping breath as he sees the stables quiet, still standing. He clamours up to the loft, feet skittish across the uncertain floor; certain that the explosions were meant for him, Sherlock knows that those responsible won’t have left his laboratory untouched, not after their warning. 

In the centre of his desk, where had been placed Molly’s scalpel, a lumpen package rests. Sherlock lifts it; the familiar weight chills him, down to the knots deep in his stomach, and ignoring the complex map spreading across his wall, he upturns the box next to his desk to find his tin of cheddar. His pockets thus laden, he takes the ladder in two long-legged reaches, feet hitting the ground just as he is knocked back — breath gone — and all goes black. 

++

Sherlock comes to feeling dry, rasping straw under his grappling fingers. Hot — his skin aches, fingertips, wrists, neck, cheeks — dry — his swallowing mouth finding no air — heavy — his legs pinned by something wooden, immobile. He opens his eyes and shuts them again, screws them tight, immediately; grit and ash prickle under his lids, infiltrate his nostrils. Throwing one arm over his mouth and nose, he uses his other elbow to pull himself back, kicking at the ground with the heels of his boots to lift the weight from his legs. A jolt, a strain, and finally something gives. He shifts enough to roll over, to tuck his mouth against the upturned collar of his coat and crawl away.

Fresh air assaults him: cold and brisk, it rushes through his lungs, a cascade of needling breaths. Shoving the door further open, he drags himself out. With every fumbling crawl his injured ankle sends a protest of pain, but he shoves his body forward until he can feel cold, hard soil under his fingers, until the winter-deadened grass sticks to his palms, to his tired mouth as he lets his head droop. 

The stables burn merrily. Irregular bursts of fire, colourful and jubilant, flare up as the inferno consumes the remains of his chemical store. With difficulty, Sherlock sits up and thrusts his hand into the pocket of his tattered greatcoat. 

The package cannot be called a warning; a message, then. If there were damage to be done by it, he reasons, the jolting of his fall in the explosion would have set it off; even so, he holds his breath as he unties the string holding together the lumpishly-wrapped brown paper. It falls away and in his lap he holds one perfect, unexploded grenade, pin still firmly held in place.

The scrawl on the paper he can only just read by the light of the fire.

The pond. Midnight.

++

“I’ll admit the explosions are a nice touch, but you could have just sent the note.” Sherlock holds up the scrap of brown paper as he enters the glade. His movements send the branches rustling; his voice skitters across the glassy pond. No one answers.

“Were you afraid I wouldn’t remember you? Jim.” For it can only be Jim: the finely tuned performance of four consecutive explosions, their delicately wrought destruction. Far too intricate for the blunt-minded IRA: the annihilation beautiful and terrible in its own right, not wrapped in some idealistic purpose. 

A tree rustles; Sherlock jerks his eyes to the spot. 

“I do so like to make an impression.” The voice comes from his left, not where he looks; when Sherlock turns, Jim stands in the glade, hands thrust into his trouser pockets, like he’d been there all along. He shrugs his shoulders, a jerky, reptilian shudder, and says, “I’m ever so pleased you liked my gift.” 

The moon breaks between them, shining off the slick of Jim’s hair, parted sharply and pomaded back from his square forehead. He’s not dressed as the exuberant chemistry student tonight; even in the low light, the gentle gleam of his overcoat, the precise break of his trousers, the subtle sheen off his tie speak of money. Of London; of New York. Of Boston, likely: the pennies and shillings of Ireland’s exiled brood not quite making their way to the coffers of the IRA. 

“It certainly demanded my attention,” Sherlock says, inclining his head. A flicker of a smile crosses the corner of Jim’s mouth. “I’m rather sorry for our butler, though.” He keeps his gaze level, doesn’t let himself swallow.

Jim flicks one hand dismissively. “Servants are easy to come by. People die; they’re replaced.” His voice glides from island to island: now a mimic of Sherlock’s landed ascendancy; now a Dublin Catholic; now as Home Counties as the House of Lords. 

“A very pragmatic world view.” Sherlock eyes him, eager for any piece of reality he might let slip. Any cracks which, when induced with just the right pressure, might shatter the whole facade. Jim’s eyes slither over him, the slip-slide elusiveness of a predator luring its prey into complacency. 

“Just so.” Jim doesn’t blink; the whites of his eyes glimmer. “And you appreciate that, don’t you, Sherlock? The fuss and bother of idealism; it’s not for men like you.”

“Men like us,” Sherlock ventures, and Jim tips his chin. “That’s what this is, isn’t it? You might supply for the IRA, but you don’t share their ideals.”

“What, Ireland for the Irish? Sinn fein? Why we ourselves when the rest of the world can provide such interesting problems to solve?”

“The Germans, you mean?”

Jim doesn’t hide a pleased little smile; it creeps over his mouth with liquid smoothness. “They are promising. But it’s larger than that. So long as there are ambitious men with money, there will be a place for my particular set of skills.” 

“Explosives are in demand,” Sherlock concedes. Germany’s still-simmering tensions; India, North Africa, Spain; South African diamonds and the still-wild expanses of America, its silver and its gold. 

Jim steps a bit closer, grin widening. “You don’t quite understand yet, do you? The bombs are amusing, but my reach is ever so much broader than that. It’s a new age; war is the modern man’s business.”

“A consulting revolutionary, then?”

“If you like.” Jim’s tongue slides across the narrow line of his lower lip. “It is beautiful though, don’t you think? All that chaos that everyone else sees — all those little people, killing and dying all in a rage.” He waves to the edge of the grove, the merest dismissive flicker of his fingers encompassing the world. “And they never see the logic behind it. A word here; a shipment sent off there; it never comes back to me. No one ever sees.”

The look he gives Sherlock, for the briefest moment, has an eager edge of entreatment, a desire. Sherlock rolls his shoulders back. “I did.”

“You’ve come the closest, I’ll allow you that.” He says it with generosity, the giving of a gift, and in the pause between them he leaves the uncertainty of what expectations might accompany his allowance. 

Sherlock swallows. His pockets are heavy against his legs, his every breath perfumed with the acrid tang of smoke permeating his coat. “And now?”

Jim shrugs. “You might be in my way. But then —” His eyes drag up Sherlock’s body slowly, possessively. “You have proved yourself interesting. I like interesting.”

“What are you — what are you offering?” At Sherlock’s hesitation, Jim licks his lips, gives a pleased, fluttering blink. 

“This island is too small for you; it always has been. Why don’t you see what you might offer London? Or —” He breaks his gaze away, looking up to the stars — “Shanghai, Chicago, I don’t mind.”

“And if I say no?”

Jim doesn’t answer for a long moment, the silence stretching between them. “Then your dear Mummy and your dull brother get a telegram — oh, poor little Lord Sherlock, perished in the fire. And your little lady undertaker finds herself on the receiving end of a retribution more fatal than a hair cut.” Jim takes a half-step forward. Sherlock swallows; stands his ground. “And lest we forget Constable Watson. Ambushes are ever so easy to arrange these days, I find.”

Sherlock draws a breath in; out. The forgotten note crumples in his fist. Jim sees, gives a pleased little flick of his eyebrows. “No.”

“What’s that?” Jim cocks his head; an elaborate puppetry pantomime.

“I said no,” Sherlock reiterates, standing firm. No to Jim’s empire of crime; no to his threats; no to the flick of his hand which would send a bullet into John’s heart. 

“That is disappointing.”

Sherlock gives his own elaborate shrug, saying brightly, “I find I’m quite used to being a disappointment.” He shoves his hands into the pockets of his overcoat with the casual, affected gesture of a childish lord and offers a vacant smile. 

“And I had so looked forward to working with you,” Jim says, with a dramatic sigh. “Oh, well.” He glances toward the ground, all affected disappointment, and Sherlock jerks his hand from his pocket and throws the grenade, pin still pinched between his forefinger and thumb.

With serpentine grace, Jim ducks to avoid its trajectory, watching as it sails over his shoulder to land in the soft, peaty ground behind him. Jim mocks bracing against it, with the elaborate, gestural drama of the circulars which had been distributed during the war, to indicate proper procedure in case of bombing. Sherlock stumbles back; the grenade rocks gently but remains inert. 

“You didn’t think I left you a live one, did you?” Jim laughs; the high, skittering sound reverberates through the close grove, and, as he throws his head back, Sherlock fumbles behind his back for a moment before he feels a familiar click. In one movement, he tosses, underhand, his father’s lighter, tied firmly to his little tin of cheddar, its flame even now creeping up the oiled wick connecting the two. 

In the long moment as the bundle arcs between them, Sherlock has enough time to see Jim’s startled eyebrows raise before he pivots and runs, crashing through the trees as behind him, the night’s fifth explosion lights up the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[Troubles in Ireland (1920-1929)](http://youtu.be/ov-rnEqNefo)**
> 
> **1\. The annihilation beautiful and terrible in its own right** I totally cop to gesturing toward WB Yeats here, from “Easter, 1916”:  
>  _All changed, changed utterly:_  
>  A terrible beauty is born.
> 
> The “terrible beauty” thing will crop up again and again throughout descriptions of Irish history and contemporary events, still lingering even in descriptions of the Troubles in what I would argue is now a fairly cliched way.
> 
>  **2\. Norbury burning** Though there was a fair amount of destruction of property by both IRA and RIC forces during the War of Independence, including the burning of “Big Houses,” or Anglo-Irish estates, it is a commonly-held misunderstanding that most of the Big Houses burnt during the period of revolution were destroyed during the War of Independence. In fact, about 200 were burnt during the Civil War (1922-23), compared to 76 burnt during the War of Independence (1920-21). Interestingly, however, County Cork seemed to suffer a disproportionate amount: more than one-third of those burnt during the War of Independence were located in County Cork. I want to stress that the burning of Norbury is plausible though not necessarily probable (not including Jim’s involvement, of course). Those of you who have read Bowen’s _The Last September_ might recognise some inspiration, however.
> 
>  **3\. You might supply for the IRA, but you don’t share their ideals.** Jim, as depicted here, is of course a construct of the BBC show, and I want to make it clear that there is no indication that the real James O'Donovan was anything but wholly devoted to the ideals and ideology of the IRA. The flow of money (and guns) between the US, Ireland, Germany, and elsewhere no doubt benefited some enterprising gunrunners, but again, in most cases those giving from the US and within Ireland or the UK did so out of agreement with the Republican cause.


	24. The Empty House

The sisters — Isibeal and Ailbhe Hurley — had refused to speak. Ailbhe had sat across from John at the narrow table and stared at her hands for a long hour while her sister rocked the baby against her breast in the corner. The only sounds besides John’s increasingly angry questioning were Isibeal’s low, crooning lullabies. He’d given it up for a bad job in the small hours of the morning and lain awake in his bed until light.

Now, John carries the photograph of Isibeal’s husband in his breast pocket, pulled loose from its gilt frame; if he shoves it under enough lowered gazes, someone will slip up eventually and give them something they can use. With Danielson — without a Sergeant, the company should, by rights, stand down until a replacement can be sent in from Cork or Dublin. Even if John were so inclined, he would find it a battle to convince the rest of the constables to await instruction. Not a single man had appeared that morning without his Lee-Enfield, his bandoleer, his overcoat; and so they had set their boots to the ground and their sights to the town, determined to make good use of their newly-established martial powers. 

Aldershot had arrived with the sun, bearing a message from Moran: what remains of C Company will patrol the west hills in an effort to flush out the West Cork Column. He has a nervous habit of twisting his hands together when reporting; John doesn’t know many of the members of Number One Platoon, but if Aldershot is their best offer, he has doubts about their ability to find the road itself, never mind the well-connected and well-concealed flying column. He says a brief, irreverent prayer for Moran as they cross the bridge to town, driving the Crossley slow so that the hum of the engine reverberates against the centuries-old stone.

People stay inside today. The chill December air, blowing with it the dregs of autumn’s fallen leaves across the empty street; the myriad notices, posted on the doors and in the windows of every public building, their words, official and otherwise, bleak and dark and menacing; and the hobnailed thud of patrolling boots, the roar of Crossley engines, mean the doors stay latched, the windows shuttered. 

They start with the shops. The Post Office, first, where Mrs Flanagan looks up at the bang-open of the door and sighs; no one else is there. In O’Connor’s mercantile, now run by his widow, a group of women examine the calicoes. They huddle closer when the men enter, their voices dropped silent. Mrs O’Connor’s hands curl around the edge of the counter top, their whitening knuckles matched only by the tight set of her mouth. 

Remembering Sherlock’s search, many months ago, John gestures Blake to the other side of the counter, where he has to step intimidatingly close to Mrs O’Connor before she reluctantly moves aside. As before, the cabinet nearly spills over with canned provisions, no doubt the best she can get through her husband’s remaining connections. 

“We’ll be having those,” John says, tugging loose a pair of canvas rucksacks and tossing them to Blake to fill. If they need to starve the IRA out, they will, and it’s not much but a start. John pointedly looks away when Blake tosses a few other things into the rucksacks as they leave — castile soap a bit nicer than the charcoal stuff they wash with; a round of cheese with a waxy blue rind; a pot of honey. John wonders if it is from Flynn’s hives, or maybe Norbury’s; the last trickle before winter set in. He knows Sherlock couldn’t bear to leave either unattended, though he has a difficult time imagining Sherlock with the patience to bottle and distribute their product.

They have more luck at the pub. Though Mr Sheehan, the publican, doesn’t startle at their entrance, the quick flick of his eyes to the back room sends John striding across the near-empty pub to push open the rear doors. Four men — young men — scramble to their feet as he strides in. But for a crusty hunk of bread, their table is empty. 

“Against the back wall, boys,” John says, a casual swing in his gesture. They glare, almost as one. Their faces are too worn for their age, their bodies rangy with living rough, just like the man who killed Danielson.

“It’s not been made a crime to sit and talk,” one of the men says, shoulders rearing back. His mouth twists into a sneer; his hand fists. John drops his hand to the butt of his Webley, tilts his chin. The man’s shoulders come down and he takes a slow, deliberate step backwards, though his lip still curls in anger. At John’s impatient gesture, the rest follow.

As Blake and Hughes search each — their chests shoved roughly to the wall, the insignificant contents of their pockets tossed to the floor — John thrusts the photograph under each man’s nose in turn. He watches their faces for recognition, for responses to his questions, and wishes he had Sherlock there to read the tiny, meaningful flickers. 

None of the four speak, but when he glimpses the photograph, the last man sniffs and flicks his eyes away. John holds up a finger to pause Blake’s searching of the man’s pockets and steps in close. 

“Not a friend of yours, then?” he says, quietly. Blake’s hand on the back of his neck keeps the man pinned to the wall; he can’t avert his gaze from John’s. “You have a quarrel with him? He owe you money, or —” 

If he appeals to law, he’ll get little but the man’s spit in his face, and real threats must be followed through with. This stubborn boy is hardly worth the mess, and John will not have today’s work be for nothing. Danielson will still be dead, but they’ll have _something._ He redirects his attack, leaning in to whisper — “or is it about that pretty little wife of his? Isibeal?” He pronounces it _Isabel_ , purposefully, taking away the soft _sh_ and giving it the frank, sharp, English end. He’s hit his mark; the man’s teeth grind together. “You wish that mewling little baby of hers was yours, don’t you, not his? That you were the one fucking her, making her scream —”

The man snarls and shoves against Blake, who slams him back into the wall with a crack. “What’s his name?” John holds the photo up to the man’s face, close enough that he can’t avoid looking. “The man fucking your sweetheart, what’s his name?”

He spits; it smacks the photograph and runs down John’s wrist. Lowering his hand, John looks at it distastefully, then wipes the spittle onto the man’s jacket sleeve. Nodding to Blake, he says, “Handcuffs. The Crown frowns upon assaults onto the Constabulary.”

Blake cuffs him and Hughes another of the men, whose pockets had held a small folding knife. They take their time; they have nothing concrete to bring the final two back on, but if they rile them enough they might. Hughes is offering mild, smiling comments as to the relative size of the boy’s dagger when the door clatters open. 

John’s gun is drawn before he turns, but he lowers it upon seeing Ruiri’s wide, startled eyes. The boy says something in Irish, the words a tumbling, wild stream John cannot understand. 

“In English,” he reminds the boy; Ruiri takes a swallowing gulp.

“I didn’t know who to tell — I went there and I didn’t know and —” He’s shaking, his little fists trembling, and his quivering mouth is pale. John drops to a knee, ducks his head to catch Ruiri’s eyes.

“Slow down. Where were you?”

“He asked me to listen, to keep my ears up. And I had to tell him, so I took my bicycle —” John swallows around the sourness that rises, unexpectedly, in his throat. There’s only one person Ruiri could be talking about.

“Where?” he repeats, with more urgency.

Ruiri blinks at him, eyes widening. “Norbury. It was — it was burning. I didn’t know who to —”

John jerks to his feet, startling Ruiri into silence. Behind him, one of the uncuffed men spits on the ground. “Fecking deserve it,” he mutters, and John is on him before he can spit again.

Forearm across his throat, tip of his gun pressing into the soft, tender skin of his temple, John snarls, “What did you say?” The man’s spittle dribbles at the corner of his mouth, which slackens with surprise. John cocks the gun and says again, quieter, “What did you say?”

He can hear the other men shifting behind him, uneasy, but none have stilled his hand yet. Under his finger, the trigger is cool, smooth.

The man gasps under John’s pressing arm, gags and wheezes for breath. Close, John can smell the sourness of his fear. “Say it again,” he says, calmly. He lets up his arm a fraction, and the man gulps at the air. “Again.”

“I said —” He stalls; John nudges his temple with the gun. “They deserve it. And they do, fecking big house scum,” he finishes with a sudden burst of bravery, his sneer not quite obscuring the fearful dart of his eyes. 

John’s hand is very still, his breathing very steady. His finger tightens, and — and then — he lets it up just as behind him, Hughes says his name — Watson — with a sort of slow, calm patience. Dropping his gun hand to his side, he steps back.

“Take ‘em all back,” he says and hears an abortive squeak of protest from the last man, who quickly stifles it. 

“Are you going —” John nods, holstering his gun and buttoning his overcoat. Finnegan’s gaze snaps between John and Hughes, perplexed. 

“What is he —” At a sharp glance from Hughes, Finnegan bites back the rest of his words.

Jerking his chin to point at Finnegan and Blake, Hughes asks, “Reinforcements?”

John shakes his head. If he finds — if Sherlock is — if the worst happens, he doesn’t want their eyes on him. Hughes nods, and opens his mouth as if to add something else, then turns and waves to the door. “You heard him; get them back to the cells.”

He fumbles the keys in the ignition at first, but soon the engine turns over and roars alive. Jerking it into gear, John rips down the empty road, taking the left turn at the end of town hard and sharp.

++

He smells the fire long before Norbury is in sight, and as the sharp acridity fills his lungs he realises that the hazy fog he took for the clinging, damp air of winter is smoke. It thickens as he nears, stinging his eyes. 

The tyres skid as he rounds the corner of the drive; the rise of the hill above him, the arbour of trees which dip and shelter the road send his mind back months, to his first visit with Smyth. To the first glimpse he had of Norbury, weather-streaked granite and climbing ivy, its proud bearing resolute against the encroaching creep of time. From here, he should just be able to see the dark slate roof, the tops of the portico columns; instead, billowing smoke obscures the empty sky.

The air grows hotter, though he sees no flames. Rather, the blackened remains of the house smolder, carpets and curtains long since consumed, granite soot-darkened and oak glowing crimson. Jerking the motorcar into the drive and throwing on the brake, John jumps out, calling for Sherlock.

His shouts are answered by the sudden loud crack of a timber falling in; the remaining wall of the east wing collapses into itself with the slow, lumbering grace of a fallen game beast. The tumbling bricks send up a sparking cloud of soot-black smoke, then seem to settle. 

Rounding the corner of the house, still calling out Sherlock’s name, John thinks for a brief, stupefying second that the stables still stand. At a second look, however, he realises that only the facade remains, the heavy stone and lime mortar somehow resisting the pressing heat of the smoldering fire behind it. The remains of the door hang on a single hinge, burnt down to two charred slats, and smoke eases in lazy billows out of the shattered windows. 

Covering his mouth with his sleeve, John steps through the doorway; the motion leaves him reeling for a moment, something tipping in his memory, unbalanced, until he remembers the duck of Sherlock’s head. He’s almost always followed Sherlock in, seeing the white flash of his neck as he bends his head under the low lintel. 

Setting his mind more firmly, John steps gingerly through the smoldering rubble. He pulls his arm away long enough to call for Sherlock, but a cough bursts up his throat at the attempt. The heat — all around him, pressing in — soaks through his boots and creeps under his uniform. The air scorches his skin. 

There’s no movement in the stables but the occasional flaring flame or falling timber. Peering, he tries to see into the back corners, behind the fallen stall dividers, up into the gaps in the loft floor, but the smoke obscures any detail. He hasn’t seen anything that looks like a body, though, which gives him enough hope to turn and stumble to the door, falling to his knees on the gravel and gulping fresh air. 

— Gulping, laughing, Sherlock’s narrow forearm under his hands, Sherlock collapsing on the grass, laughing and shielding his eyes from the sun — 

— Sherlock, movements strained and cheek bruised; Sherlock warned off by Tom Barry himself — 

— Sherlock at the mortuary, his body the one on the cold steel table, his skin peeling and burnt; or his skeleton, found days later, once the fire burns out — 

Sherlock burned; Sherlock shot; Sherlock killed.

John’s tyres send a skittering spray of gravel up as he speeds off toward town.

++

“Have they said anything? Has anyone bloody said anything useful?” 

Hughes blinks up at John, unperturbed by the slammed door, by John’s quietly raging voice, by John’s clenching fists. He drops his fork to his empty plate with a clatter and shoves back from the kitchen table.

“Nah, they’ve closed up tighter than a duck’s arsehole.” Despite his casual words, his expression holds a note of calm concern. “Is it —?” John nods once. “Fuck. Right, then. Finnegan!” He leans around John to call up the stairs. “Blake! Whichever of you bastards want to kill some fenian fucks —”

“We don’t even know —” _anything_ , he wants to say; any names, locations, any solid leads on where to find the West Cork or if they were even, definitively, involved in the ambush, in the fire. If Sherlock is — where Sherlock is.

Hughes reaches over the table to pick up his rifle, swinging it over his shoulder. “Let’s not let that stop us. I figure if we drive around long enough, we’re bound to run into some of those bastards.” 

Finnegan stands on the last step, buttoning his tunic; behind him, Blake leans to watch Hughes and John emerge from the kitchen. “What happened?” His eyes jump rapidly between John and Hughes, wide, guileless, and John feels a sudden stab of disgust at the innocent furrow of his brow, the curious tilt of his mouth.

“They burned it,” he says flatly, moving past them to the door. Hesitation inhabits their silence for a moment, but by the time John steps outside and down the front stairs all three men are just behind him.

An Auxie hails them just as the tender reaches the edge of town. Pulling up, John recognises Moran; on his own, again, coming back into town after a mission, but this time only sweat darkens his moustache and his unbloodied grin is broad, not grim.

“Good news, gents.” He places one hand on the frame of the door next to John as the tender rocks to a stop. “I know who ordered Danielson’s death.”

Finnegan gives a stifled little gasp, which John ignores. “Didn’t we already? Tom Barry — doesn’t half do us good if we can’t find him.”

“No,” Moran says, leaning in closer. “Higher up.”

“Dublin?”

Moran shakes his head. “Cork.”

Leaning forward to see around John, Hughes says, with a dry, unimpressed tone, “You’re bloody well informed of a sudden.”

Moran shrugs. “Found a lad out in the forest today, laying grenades.”

“And he talked?”

“Sang, practically.” Moran tightens his lips, a thin smile.

Finally, someone choosing talking over RIC fists. John reaches into his pocket. “Take this to him. I’d like to put a name to that fellow.” John holds out the photograph, but Moran doesn’t move.

“He’s not talking any more,” Moran says, pleasantly. John raises an eyebrow; Moran’s expression stays placid. “I did get an address. If you boys are up for a drive.”

John glances at Hughes, whose brow draws in tight for a moment before clearing. He shrugs. “Alright, then,” he says to Moran, leaning over John. “Get in. Blake, go tell ‘em at the barracks that we’re going to Cork.” Blake starts to protest, but Hughes turns and fixes him with a patient stare. 

“Fine.” Blake jumps out of the back; Hughes gets in; John moves over; Moran slides behind the wheel. 

++

They cross paths with two other full Crossleys and an armoured lorry as they drive into Cork. 

“What —” John doesn’t realise he’s spoken until Moran looks over at him.

“Didn’t you hear? Ambush on an Auxie patrol this morning; three dead. You’re not the only ones with revenge on your mind.”

His words unsettle; is that what drives him, petty vengeance? For whom? For Danielson, for — The thought crawls in the back of his mind, an insect creeping up his neck. He glances at Moran, whose eyes are back on the crowded roads.

People of all kinds fill the Cork streets — soldiers and constables, mothers tugging their children out of the street, young men with scowls and young women with gritted teeth. The Crossley moves slowly, the crowds parting with molasses sluggishness, and Moran steers it down a quieter street, where a row of brick houses wait, curtains tightly drawn and ironwork front gates firmly shut. 

Moran draws to a stop at one unremarkable row house, closed up and dark as its neighbours. “Doesn’t look like much,” Hughes says under his breath. The twitch of Moran’s lip is all he receives as answer. 

The front door is unlocked; it would be unusual in London, John thinks, but not in Cork, most nights. The foyer is dark, so they leave the door open behind them for its square of tepid afternoon light. The days draw shorter and shorter and already the pale sun hovers at the horizon. The house holds a hush like a drawn-in breath, like it could clatter to life in one gusty exhale. 

Moran leads; he gestures John and Hughes up the stairs while he and Finnegan canvas the ground storey. 

The stairs creak with John’s first step. Hughes rolls his eyes, the whites briefly visible in the dim gloom; John forks his fingers in return. The next step, and the next, he takes more carefully, and they ascend thus: cat-toed burglars in a pantomime. 

There are two rooms at the top and another down the corridor. Musty air presses into John’s nostrils, and in the dim sliver of light offered by the door, he can just see the tattered wallpaper hanging in long, threaded strips. Reaching, John grasps the knob of the nearest door and eases it open. But for a rolled carpet sagging against the corner and a chair, one leg wrenched brokenly and the whole listing sideways dangerously, the room is empty. The others are similarly abandoned. Why would Moran take them to an empty house?

Hughes gives a shrug, made more dramatic by the jump of his lurking shadow, and jerks his head down the stairs. John’s foot barely hovers above the step, caught in the second before it touches and bears weight, when a gunshot wrenches the air. 

He clatters down, Hughes one step behind him, and instinctively throws open the door to the front parlour. As he does, the glaring headlamps of a passing motorcar flash through the windows; suddenly all is crimson and bright, but for the looming outline of Moran’s form. He makes a movement as the car passes, and when John’s eyes adjust it’s to the point of Moran’s pistol aimed at him.

He blinks and edges into the room slowly. Behind him, Hughes mutters — _what the_ — but then goes silent. Dragging his eyes from Moran for a moment, John surveys the rest of the room. A shadowed lumpish form on the floor can only be Finnegan; he doesn’t move, and a dark pool stains the floor below him. 

“What is this, Moran?” John is careful to look Moran in the eye, not the barrel of his gun, and keep his voice level.

Moran grins, his teeth a slice of white in the darkness. “Can’t you tell? I’d’ve thought your young lord would have had it all figured out by now. Not as smart as he thinks, I suppose.”

John grits his teeth and very carefully does not say anything about Sherlock. “Whatever it is, I’m sure we can solve it without the gun.” 

“That’s not how we do things, though, is it? We soldiers.” John can feel the presence of Hughes behind him, his waiting muscles tense. 

“It’s hardly something to kill over,” Hughes says, his voice measured. “Folks mightn’t like it, but you’ll hardly be jailed for a bit of race-fixing.” John breathes slowly; in, out. He had nearly forgotten about the cheating, about Hughes’s voice floating down the corridor at that disastrous dance in the summer. Moran’s dismissive huff, though, tells him that this isn’t about horse racing.

Indeed, Moran sighs and gestures with the point of his gun. Carefully, John moves deeper into the room as indicated, so Hughes is no longer behind him hovering in the doorway. “Not very clever, are you? Not much behind that smart mouth?” He’s turned the pistol on Hughes, but John is too near and Moran too quick for John to make any move to escape. 

“It’s something bigger, isn’t it?” John says, thinking _keep him talking._ “Something to do with explosives, gunrunning, with —” he grasps wildly, but as soon as he says it, he knows it’s true — “with the ambush. It was you, that told them. You that set it up.”

Moran dips his head in mock courtesy. “And made them all look so nice after. I only wish I could have seen all of your faces when you saw them.”

_The brutal damage was done postmortem._ At Moran’s hand. “They were your men,” John says, unable to stop the sickened tone of disbelief from creeping into his voice. 

“They were weak,” Moran says with a scoff. “Pawns for a weak government.” He pauses, searching John’s face. John very carefully keeps it blank. “You don’t think anyone _cares_ that we’re here, do you? That anyone thinks we’re doing the King’s work?” Beside him, Hughes shifts. It’s not as though they haven’t, all of them, expressed the same at one point. “That we’re not entirely expendable?” 

He pulls the trigger. The sound reverberates in the small room, deafening; it obliterates what sounds must come from Hughes’s gaped-open mouth. Hughes clutches his chest, and against the pale white of his fingers, blood oozes. 

It happens slowly: the shot; Hughes’s hand gripping at his tunic; the way his body folds and collapses; and yet so quickly John cannot move even a step before Hughes is sprawled in the doorway. Coughing — he must be coughing — John feels a wet splatter across his hand, sticky and warm. 

Dropping to a knee, John grapples across the wet mess of Hughes’s chest. Blood — all blood — he can’t find its source, can’t press down — _keep pressure, hold on, you haven’t beat me at cards yet, keep breathing_ — can’t help.

“He’s dead, Watson. Or will be.” John’s hands slide and catch and — yes — he feels a pulse of blood, spurting weakly against his fingertips, but even as he finds it it fades, the trickle slowing, and Hughes’s ribcage no longer rises under his hands. He shoves against his chest again, and again, though he knows there’s little purpose now. 

When he looks up, Moran watches him with pity. The street lamps have come on, and their sickly glow paints the room with long, striped shadows through the windowpane. John stands, eyes on Moran, and wipes his hands roughly against his trousers.

“Was that necessary,” he says between gritted teeth. Moran merely tilts his head. He’s lowered his gun, watching John, but holds it ready, cocked. John steps over Hughes’s outstretched legs; he doesn’t want any impediment between them. 

“It did provoke a reaction,” Moran says blandly. 

“And the ambush? The mutilation? Did that _provoke a reaction?_ ”

“Neatly applied chaos,” Moran supplies. “Well. It’s not my theory; I’m only the instrument.” 

_Dublin_. John rocks on his heels, as though he’s nervous. “But not of the Crown.” 

Moran snorts. “Not since Colenso,” he says with a laugh, as though he’s told an excellent joke. He would have been young; Sherlock’s age, John thinks. Younger. “Not since I learnt how bloody ineffectual the Crown could be.”

“France?” John asks. “North Africa?”

“Whoever paid.” He shrugs. “It’s better than being under siege.” 

John doesn’t answer. His nervous rocking has, in fact, served to bring him deeper into the room, until he and Moran are lined up just — so. He doesn’t dare hope for a distracted moment, so all he can wish is to be fast. 

As he pushes forward, a gunshot sounds; he feels it, distantly — a pain in his thigh — but his body moves still, colliding with Moran and launching them both through the window. Glass shatters — tiny, stinging cuts on his hands, his face — and they land. John can’t breathe — can’t move — can’t see — but he pushes against something yielding; against _Moran_ , pinned underneath him and grappling; is that him groaning, is that John — blood in his eyes, or sweat — 

And John’s on his feet. He swings his fist, hitting nothing. He wipes his sleeve over his face, and when he opens his eyes it’s in just enough time to see Moran’s punch coming. It glances off John’s chin. Crouching, he runs awkwardly to the tender, but Moran reaches it at the same time; for a long moment they stare at each other across the bonnet before John steps backward, turns into the street. His leg throbs.

On him in a moment, Moran lands a punch on his kidneys, and another. John curls in, digs his elbow into Moran’s gut, hearing a satisfying groan. He rears back, curling his hand together, when a splitting sound rends the air. He feels Moran’s body tense and dares a look up and — and stumbles back, shoving away from Moran, to get out of the way of the fire rescue engine peeling down the street.

It tears between them; stumbling backwards across the road, John is stupefied for a long, aching moment. The street lamps glow behind his blinking eyes and under his feet the pavement shifts, twists. Then he takes a breath, and the air fills his lungs and his mind cries out _run_ and his body answers, though with every step his leg burns.

He comes to the end of the quiet road. He turns the corner and is met by the pounding, punishing heat of a crimson blaze of fire.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[Reprisals by Order (1921)](http://youtu.be/_Op2rY8OgvM)**
> 
> Whew! Only one note this time.
> 
> **1\. Colenso** The Battle of Colenso was fought during the Second Boer War in December 1899. Due to various ineptitudes and poor decisions, the British, who outnumbered the Boer forces 3-1, lost 143 men, with 755 wounded and a further 240 missing to the Boers 8 dead and 30 wounded. The battle was the first of three failed attempts to relieve the siege of Ladysmith, a garrison town in then-British territory which was being held by the Boers. As is implied here, Moran, like John, volunteered while underage and so witnessed this siege and the massive, humiliating defeat as a just teenager.


	25. Cork Burning

Light flickers weakly under the door when he arrives. Swinging one leg over the bicycle, Sherlock turns to run up the path, but the sharp, spiking pain that thunders up his ankle has him clutching at the handlebars, gasping. A few deep breaths start to steady his pulse. He scrubs the back of his hand across his forehead; it comes away smeared with clotting, dark blood and greasy ash. Easing the bicycle to the ground, he turns and makes his way, with painful, slow steps, up to the door of the mortuary.

Molly’s back is to the door when he shoves it open, bracing himself with a tight grip on the doorknob, and at the sound she scrambles around, a defiant snarl on her lips and a scalpel clutched in one fist. Sherlock holds up his free hand, the gesture too exhausted to be mocking, and she exhales. 

“Jesus, Sherlock.” Her eyes scrape him up and down, red-rimmed exhaustion making her gaze cutting, too sharp. “What’s happened?”

“The house, it —” He shakes his head. “I suppose I really did make some enemies,” he says, with a laugh cut with the bitter bite of ash. Molly watches him; she knows there’s more he’s not saying. “I can’t go back. And I — I need you, Molly.” The words sound tinged with more pleading than he’d intended, and Molly’s eyes flash wide, only just, before she nods briskly. Sherlock releases the doorknob, takes a step forward; Molly sees his injury at once.

“Oh —” she startles forward to help. Sherlock doesn’t brush her off, telling himself she’d insist nonetheless, and leans on her to manoeuvre around to a chair. Turning from him, she wets a cloth at the sink and presses it to his hands. “Wash your face; we’ll see if that cut needs attention.” 

Kneeling, she lifts his injured leg with care and rests it on her thigh. Her fingers fumble some with the laces, dew-soaked and swollen, but she eventually tugs them apart and eases the boot off. His foot she pushes first one way, then the other, bottom lip caught, worried, in her teeth; Sherlock keeps his teeth very firmly set together and says, “Yes, damn it,” when she asks if it hurts. She looks up at him mildly and, gathering some bandages, begins to wrap the ankle firmly. 

“I don’t think it’s broken,” she says; she’s helping him, so he says nothing about being her only living patient. “Is your mother okay?” she asks, hands still holding his ankle. She doesn’t look up.

“Yes,” he says, not unkindly. “Already in London, or nearly. The house — when it burned, Maxwell was there, was inside.” 

Molly looks up; he looks away. “I’m sorry.” Sherlock nods. “I didn’t think they would —”

“It wasn’t them.” At her sharp look, he waves his hand, as much to excuse himself explaining as reassure Molly. “It’s slightly more complicated than simple revenge.”

“Is it now?” Flat and unimpressed, her voice nonetheless holds an edge of relief.

“I’ll explain — later.”

“Fine.” She pats his ankle, ignoring the slight wince her movement produces. At her direction, he balances his heel precariously at the edge of the table, slouching ungracefully in his chair, and wrinkles his nose at the pleased little smile she gives his ungainly state. Behind her, the window fogs with the heat of their breathing bodies; beyond it the early morning air, too, carries the haze of smoke and damp, unbroken clouds hanging heavy but giving no abatement to the night’s inferno. 

The mortuary is cool; Molly wears a worn woollen jumper and a scarf wrapped untidily around her neck. Still, it is warmer than the forest, where Sherlock had trudged after his confrontation with Jim. The house would be watched, he was certain, but he also knew he couldn’t get all the way to Macroom without transport. Their motorcar had burned with the house, and his bicycle was no doubt a crippled skeleton in the remains of the stables. Lacing his boot tight and pulling his overcoat snug, he’d set out north-northeast, in the direction of Macroom, knowing of two smallholdings he could steal into on the way. Tenants of Norbury; surely they’d none of them miss a bicycle for a few hours? He stayed in the trees as long as possible, then walked along the edge of the darkened road, torch glaring down, until he found a clunky cycle, two decades old at least, leaning next to the front door of the Donoghue cottage. 

It was unwieldy to hold the torch while cycling, but he couldn’t be reliant on the half-moon which slid, too frequently, behind smoky, rain-heavy clouds. He ignored the throbbing of his ankle, which intensified with each down stroke of his pedalling legs. He thought of Jim the whole time; of Jim, and of Moran, and what might connect the two; of what proof he could possibly find of their activities. The last of any weaponry Sherlock possessed had exploded in the forest, so he had nothing with which to fight Jim physically and had lost any small proof of Jim’s connection with bomb-making. Moran is his way in.

Molly lifts the forgotten cloth from his forehead and frowns at the sight underneath. Sherlock doesn’t remember the injury; it must have happened in the stables, but the low, throbbing pain of his bruised forehead blends with the insistent thrumming of his mind, running on exhilaration and some measure of fear, not enough sleep and no food since — he doesn’t remember. Molly laces a needle and admonishes him to sit still while she places three brisk, efficient, stinging stitches into his forehead.

“I was going to come see you, in the morning,” Molly says, giving him a glare as he flinches away from the pierce of her needle. “I found something. Something odd.”

Sherlock sits up straighter, holds himself wilfully still for the next stitch. “From the ambush?” She shakes her head.

“Danielson. It’s just — the bullets are wrong.”

Danielson, crumpled in the alley, his chest a mangled mire of blood. Sherlock swallows, leans forward. “Show me.” She tuts, ties off and clips her last stitch.

Dropping her tools onto a tray, Molly wipes her hands against her skirt, another streak of rust on its murky, stained surface. She reaches for a small box, a magnifying glass — what she had been working on when Sherlock arrived. “I don’t have it quite figured yet,” she says, handing him the objects. “But those bullets did not come from the gun found on — on Padraig’s body. His gun had been fired, but only once.”

In the box, three small chunks of lead rattle. Sherlock lifts one out, peers at it with the magnifying glass, then shifts his gaze up. Through the glass, Molly’s face is wavy, distorted. He glances back down. All three look the same to him: unremarkable. “Walk me through it.”

“They’re too small, to start.” She turns and bends to rummage in one of the cupboards, hauling out a battered wooden crate. Dropping it heavily to the table, she lifts out three jars and two cigar boxes. Each jar is filled with flattened, spent bullets. Sherlock looks up at her, startled. “I save them,” she says, looking a bit abashed. “It just seems — someone should. They’re not all from bodies, though. Dug out from walls, found at ambush sites, target practice.” Sherlock’s staring, he knows he is, but he can’t quite stop gaping at this unexpected display. 

“Right,” Molly says, with a deep breath. “These,” she places her palm over the fullest jar, “are most common. From Webley revolvers, carried by many, if not most, of the police, Tans, Auxies, and IRA. Standard-issue to the British Army; remarkably easy to get one’s hands on.” At Sherlock’s raised eyebrow, she says, in a defencive rush, “I don’t _know_ , I’m not involved.” Sherlock thinks, before this week, that he might have had a difficult time imagining Molly implicated in gun-running; now, he’s not certain.

“Padraig carried a Webley Mark VI. Very common. He — the one found on his body was certainly his. He — he’s the one who taught me all this. Well. Got me started, let me shoot his revolver and rifle, and those of some of the boys. When I told him I wanted to take the bullets from the target with me, he laughed. But I don’t know, I think — they’re all a bit different, and I thought —”

“Molly, you are brilliant.” Sherlock had read a bit about firearm identification, but hadn’t be interested at the time, not enough to make a thorough study. But Molly! He gestured to the rest. “Tell me everything.”

Molly’s small, thinned-lip smile flashes for the first time that evening. Taking up the second and third jars, she explains, “These, I think, are all from Lee-Enfields, and these from Lewis guns.” She unstacks the cigar boxes, pushes them down the table to Sherlock. He flips the lids open, revealing a dozen small compartments in each, in which nestle small bits of cotton, single and small groupings of bullets, and scraps of paper serving as labels. “These I’m not sure on,” she says, gesturing toward a small pile in one box, “but I have some from just about every gun in the castle, and all these from Padraig’s column.”

Sherlock can only shake his head. “How?”

A flush creeps up her cheeks. “I know a boy who mops up in the kitchen at the castle. He likes guns, the men like showing off. He collects the targets after, gets out the bullets and tells me who fired them.” Sherlock’s eyebrow twitches. “He likes to talk!” Molly says, defensively. 

Her work is precise, he thinks with some admiration as he examines the specimens. Colts, Mausers, Webleys, Lewis guns, Vickers guns, a Luger, a Browning, a Smith & Wesson. “If it’s not from a Webley, then what?”

“I hadn’t quite got that far,” Molly admits. She pulls the cigar box closer to her, lifting the small box holding the bullets from Danielson’s corpse in the palm of her hand. “Too small for the Webley, and he was shot too close for a Lee-Enfield, Vickers, or Lewis. Could be one of the Colts, but it’s not quite right.” She lifts each in turn, holding them in her palm next to one of the unidentified bullets to examine with the magnifying glass. “It’s difficult,” she concedes. “I don’t — they study I’ve done can’t begin to cover what is — what must be possible. I can only guess.”

“Give us a guess, then,” he says.

She shakes her head. “It’s strange. I’d say it’s nearest to the Luger, but —”

“What?”

“Only one man carries a Luger, as far as I know. Colonel Moran.”

The breath hisses out of Sherlock. He holds out his hand; Molly drops the two bullets into it. He peers at them.

She’s right. The shape is distorted differently — a man’s body versus a straw target — but the size, weight, and metal seem to match. He can just see scratches, distortions in the metal, but not clearly enough to compare properly. But a laboratory in London might be able to.

“I need to see all of your notes on the ambush victims again,” he says. “Did you save the bullets separately? Are they labelled?”

Molly nods and turns to pull some notebooks down from a shelf. “What do you think you’ll find?”

“Do you know anything about any other informants?” he asks instead of answering. She narrows her eyes, but he cuts off her protest. “Not other townspeople. Someone higher up.” 

“I’ve —” She pauses, worries her lower lip. “I don’t know who, but someone — I know there are other folks in town, but some of the attacks. Well. I think they must have someone inside.”

“Moran,” Sherlock says simply. Molly exhales, with a slight tremor. “So I need to know everything about the ambush; I need to see it all again. I can’t — I need proof, Molly.”

“Why should I help?” Enough wariness tinges her voice for Sherlock to know that she’s faltering, ill at ease with her allegiances, her loyalty and her sense of justice waging war.

“If Padraig didn’t kill Danielson, then why was he there? Was he set up? Do you think, now, after having half their company killed, that the Auxiliaries will be content to let the rest of Padraig’s cohort go? Moran knows how delicate stands the division between war and retaliation, between justified killings and massacres, and he is poised to snap it apart. And he has help — money, bombs —” Sherlock cuts himself off, unwilling to explain Jim to Molly. Better that she knows nothing about him. “You already grow tired of these bodies, here, on your table. If Moran is unchecked, there will be dozens more.”

Molly’s lip trembles, only a bit. She squares her shoulders back. “They might kill me, if they find out.”

Sherlock nods. “They might. Then again, if you expose Moran as not only a traitor to his country, but also to their cause even as he acted as informer, they might thank you.”

Molly shakes her head. “You don’t know them. Not even Padraig.” She turns and reaches for the rest of the notebooks from the shelf above her head, heaving them onto the table. “I’ll help.”

++

They pore over Molly’s notes, photographs, samples, and specimens for hours, but nothing new reveals itself. None of the bullets seem to be from Moran’s Luger, and though most of the posthumous knife wounds are, as Sherlock suspected, from the same hand, they appear to have been made by an ordinary Bowie knife, some variation of which is carried by most of the men on both sides. Having fought in the trenches, the Auxies, to a man, would know how to stab a man, how to slash at his neck or his gut, those soft, vulnerable parts. 

The sun has crept far up over the windowsill, and it paints a vicious crimson light through the room. Sherlock blinks against its glare, for a moment expecting to feel the splitting heat of flame once more. Molly leans back on her stool with a groan, pressing her palms against the small of her back. 

“Have we found anything?” she asks, a despondent note creeping into her voice. Sherlock shakes his head, shoves the box in front of him away. 

“Not a thing. God, he’s — he’s careful.” Dropping his head to his hands, Sherlock scrubs his fingers through his hair, still matted and greasy from the fire, blood and ash and sweat mired on his scalp. “I need. I need to talk to John.”

“They’re friends, aren’t they?” Molly asks, jaw tightened around the words. Sherlock jerks his shoulders up, an unhappy shrug.

“He doesn’t trust him, but —” but he still listens to him, Sherlock thinks. _Ambushes are ever so easy to arrange._ Outside, the sun is high, though wintery cold, the day underway. “I’m going.” 

“Sherlock —” Molly’s hands spread in front of her, futile. “Can I —”

Sherlock shakes his head. “Watch out for Moran, and, and anyone new. Anyone strange.” Will telling her more put her in greater danger? “Keep your wits,” he says finally, and pulls the door open.

++

John’s not at the barracks, nor on patrol. Gone to Cork with Colonel Moran. Sherlock takes a great shuddering breath at the news. “He’ll be pleased to hear you’re safe, my, um, sir.” The constable on duty is young, not hiding his ire at being left behind well, and deferential by default. Sherlock searches for his name, comes up with nothing.

“Constable?”

“Blake, sir. The fire, sir?” Ah. Sherlock hadn’t counted on the news reaching Macroom. He presses Blake for more information about where John’s gone. Blake doesn’t have the address: “Cork, that’s all I know.” Inwardly, Sherlock curses camaraderie and the mindless hierarchy that inspires men to abandon all good sense. 

Waving him away, Sherlock presses his fingertips to his temples, goes through what he knows. The damp, murky smell of the barracks — close quarters, Mrs Danielson’s grief, bloodstains on the foyer floorboards — retreats as Sherlock builds back up the intertwined map he’d created on the gable of the stable loft. Moran is Jim’s man; if he can’t find Moran, one soldier in a city teeming with them, then he’ll find Jim. To London, he’d said, so that’s the docks. Sherlock pulls up the ferry schedule: if Jim had left right after their assignation in the woods, he’d be gone already, on the morning ferry; if not, one departs in an hour.

Sherlock blinks; Blake still stands in front of him, mouth slightly agape. Shoving past him and into the street, Sherlock takes two running steps before the wrenching pain in his ankle firmly reminds him of his need for transportation. Turning back inside, he demands a key from Blake. “For the motor.” 

“We don’t —” Blake shakes his head, compulsively, as he speaks. “Mrs Danielson took it up Limerick ways. There’s only the tender.”

“Fine.” Sherlock holds his hand out more insistently. At Blake’s hesitation — head still shaking nervously — he says, “Urgent crown business. You know I was working with — for Danielson.” It’s not really a lie.

Blake frowns, puzzled, but he’s at sea with Danielson gone, with John and Hughes away, and retains no small measure of awe for the local aristocracy. He pulls open a cupboard and lifts a key off a small hook inside. “I don’t —” he starts, as Sherlock grabs the key and pushes past him, toward the back lot where the tender is parked.

++

He smells the fires long before Cork is in sight, the acrid, smoky tang cutting through the crisp winter air which whistles in through one cracked window of the cab. The tender jolts and shudders with each pothole, its unwieldy mass unresponsive to all but Sherlock’s most wrenching jerks of the wheel. The people he passes openly stare or, in the case of some groups of men, throw rocks at the vehicle. The road becomes more treacherous the closer to town he gets, littered with debris and crowded with people on foot, pressing away from the city. Rounding a corner onto a street lined with neat brick row houses, Sherlock is assailed with a blaze which reaches toward the sky, painting the black rooftops with a wash of crimson. He turns down a narrower street, clipping a lamp post with the damned back of the unyielding tender, trying to make his way closer to the centre of town and the docks. 

Half the streets are blockaded or aflame, though, and the rest filled with people pressing in every direction. The tender inches along, slower than a crawl, as Sherlock debates leaving it in the street to move forward on foot, when a group of men spies the tender’s empty carriage and begins shoving their way toward it. The press of bodies is too tight for Sherlock to reverse; he grips the door handle and pushes, knocking over a woman outside, who glares and curses at him. Ignoring her, Sherlock elbows through the crowd as best he can, making for a narrow alley a dozen yards away. 

Not quickly enough, though; a hand grabs his arm, wrenching him back. Sherlock half-turns, hands held up in surrender, and, just as he catches the man’s face in the corner of his eye, pulls his fist back and lets loose a punch. The man’s hand drops with a curse, and Sherlock forces through the bewildered group of bystanders to get to the alley. Running along it, he thinks of his mental map of Cork. Incomplete and now in need of serious revision; nonetheless, he angles himself toward the docks and pushes through, slowing to a walk when necessitated by his ankle and the throngs of people, keeping his head down and inconspicuous. 

++

“He goes by Jim, maybe James, maybe Seamus. Donovan or O’Donovan.” Or maybe something else entirely, Sherlock thinks. The porter — Fitzgerald — slings another leather case onto a growing pile on a luggage cart and narrows his eyes. Sherlock’s used his services before, a few coins for an eye in the right place, but with the frantic crush of people trying to leave Cork, with the blazing flames creeping ever closer to the docks, he’s frantic, distracted. 

“Not Jim O’Donovan.” Fitzgerald shakes his head. “What do you want with him? Word is he’s well-placed.” He speaks in a hush, the cases in front of him abandoned. “High up,” he adds, in case Sherlock doesn’t understand.

Restraining the urge to roll his eyes, Sherlock nods. “Yes, him. I just need to know if he was on the ferry this morning, or if he’s on the passenger list for this one.”

“No, no I don’t think so. Listen, don’t tell anyone I even —” 

Sherlock waves him off. “Go.” With a last wary glance, Fitzgerald starts loading up the luggage cart again, wheeling it toward the ferry once full. It’s possible Jim left by more private means — the IRA have connections all over this city, and gunrunning boats Jim could take charge of with one word. The likelihood of Sherlock having a conversation with any of the rebel-connected dockworkers and making it out alive, with tonight’s unrest especially, is slim. 

He knows nothing. Nothing of Jim’s habits or haunts, his plans or movements. Yet giving up, going back to Macroom to wait patiently for John to return, is just as untenable as wandering aimlessly through the streets. He thinks back to his first encounter with Jim, to his own ruse — yes, perhaps — 

With no other hope, Sherlock makes his way toward Queen’s College.

++

The streets quiet as he nears the college, further from where the fires rage in city centre. Doors are shut tight, windows shuttered, and, walking through the gates to the college, Sherlock encounters an open, empty square, rapidly growing dark as the sun falls. Higher up, the evening’s drizzle is more persistent, leaving the back of Sherlock’s neck coated with wet, slimy ash and the paving stones slick. The chemistry building is locked tight, though a few lights remain on inside.

Picking the lock, Sherlock pushes the door open with care, and makes his way to the nearest sliver of light, which creeps under a closed door. 

The room is empty; the next as well; the next holds only a very startled cleaner. Down the hallway, up the stairs, wrenching open doors and leaving them agape as each room comes up empty: lights forgotten, lights on experiments, lights that are just glare from the courtyard. His ankle throbs, his head aches, and he knows no other options, no other hints let slip by Jim’s bravado, though his mind races through every word of their conversation.

Down the stairs, bursting outside, gasping – breath heaving, the damp, acrid air burning in his chest – Sherlock surveys the other buildings around him, which are equally still. He stands, very still, knowing there must be something – something – that will help. His mind clings and grapples, across his every encounter with Jim, with Moran, with — with John. 

“Fuck!” Kicking the iron balustrade ringing the chemistry building entrance, Sherlock curses the heavy clouds above, the raging fires spread below in the city, his own damned ignorance. Hands scrabbling in his hair, he glances frantically around, for anything, when a flash of light across the courtyard catches his eye. It’s there and gone quickly enough that any average person would think they imagined it. 

He runs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week’s clip:[Reprisals in Ireland Condemned by Sir Hamar Greenwood (1920)](http://youtu.be/mnddzSWDQ0s)**
> 
> **1\. Each jar is filled with flattened, spent bullets** Though ballistic fingerprinting can be traced by to 1835, its use as a formal technique for evidence collecting would have been at its inception in 1920. I’ve taken some liberties with the differences Molly might have been able to see, but the guns mentioned do, indeed, have different weight bullets and differently shaped shell casings. The guns mentioned, too, were all commonly used at the time: the Webley Mark VI, for instance, was the standard issue service revolver in WWI from 1915, and the Luger semiautomatic pistol was commonly used by the German military in WWI and WWII.
> 
> **2\. An ordinary Bowie knife** Like the Webley or comparable sidearms, trench knifes were a standard part of a soldier’s kit in WWI, and, also like the Webley, carried over into the outfit of the Tans. Short, sharp knives developed to kill or incapacitate enemy soldiers in close-quarter fighting (like in a trenchline), these fell under a number of different styles and designs, at least some of which were based off the standard Bowie knife, a sheath knife with a curved tip.
> 
> **3\. He smells the fires long before Cork is in sight** Some of the greatest damage of the War of Independence happened on the night of 11 December 1920, when Auxiliary and Black  & Tan forces burned and looted over 60 shops, the City Hall, and the city library of Cork. The reprisal seems nominally to be set off by the death of a single Auxiliary in a grenade ambush, but was no doubt also fuelled by a desire for revenge following the Kilmichael Ambush less than a fortnight earlier.


	26. The Last December

The wall of fire engulfs the now-skeletal frame of the building looming in front of John, its devouring flames forming a new, ghastly architecture. A fire crew has arrived, but their sand buckets and spraying hose encroach little on the flames; already, some of the men drop their buckets and stand futilely by. Dodging through them, John skirts around the house and down an alley.

His uniform clings damply to his skin and the sweat on his palms mires with Hughes’s blood, sticky and thick in the crevices of his skin, in the valleys between his fingers. Under his temples and in his throat, his pulse pounds; the bitter taste of adrenaline coats his mouth. A cry; a shout; he looks over his shoulder, ready to turn and fight, but there’s no one behind him.

He stumbles his way out of the alley and onto a tree-lined avenue of neat row houses, as yet untouched by the unrest. Shuttered and closed, all are dark; John imagines their inhabitants, huddled in cupboards under the stairs, and the need wells up in him to smash the windows.

The fear he tastes at the back of his throat is not his own.

The desire leaves him just as quickly when he spies, up a hill and through a clearing, a tall colonnade of marble. He’ll not deny that the city, smashed and aflame, has him turned around, but he thinks that might be a government building. In which case, there are likely to be rebels, and a fight he can get lost in. He half-jogs up the hill and is surprised to find that he’s reached, not City Hall nor a courthouse, but the university. He hadn’t realised he’d drifted so far.

The colonnade belongs to an overbearing neoclassical building, its outline a smudged grey against the wash of fire sweeping the city, and the quadrangle fronting it is near-deserted. A student glances at John, then just as quickly away, and picks up his pace. No one else sees him, and John quite suddenly, in the eerie silence of the marble, feels the burning of the city on his neck. His throat all at once is full of ash, and he coughs — chokes — reaches one hand up to touch his neck where there is, after all, no obstruction.

He stumbles back, tripping up the stairs of the small building behind him and wrenching open its doors.

Inside, it is cool and still, and John blinks to adjust his eyes. He fumbles at the wall for an electric switch, but there is none. A flickering light in the corner draws his eye, and as he steps nearer the shapes around him begin to coalesce into something familiar. Pews — candles — an altar. 

He grasps a long taper, thrusting it into the low, shuddering flame of one of the small votives that first drew his eye, where a brass stand holds rows and rows of melted candles. The wax makes a strange landscape, a few wicks still alight, weak flames flickering. As the candle takes, he holds it aloft. The room is small — a single chapel — and the high walls are lined with narrow, long windows. 

The stillness rings in his ears, tomblike, infinite. The pale light of the setting sun, crimsoned by flame and weakened though it is by smoke, shines through stained glass. John turns, surveying the room. A movement, just caught by the corner of his searching eye, leaves him jolting, alarmed, until he reconciles it with the glint of flame on glass. 

Certain he’s alone, he looks closer; the strange faces figured in the glass begin to form into something familiar, some from his childhood hours glaring up at the painted walls and coloured windows of the local church, others picked up since he’s been in Ireland. St Bridgit, at her well; St Patrick, staff held aloft and snakes writhing under his feet; Jesus, hand in benediction and blood-ruby robes. The colours — crimson and green and golden yellow and deep, aquamarine blue — dapple the stone floor, worn smooth by decades of prayers. His flame plays off their many colours, and even looking straight on he fancies, in the shifting light, that the figures move.

They’d been churchgoers, his family, until his father’d had enough with the ‘soft-hearted Anglican vicars’ and taken to reading scripture at home instead, for long, forceful hours. He’d favoured the wrath: the destruction done unto those who were sinful — _filthy, dirty, inverted little whore_ — those unrepentant — _prideful, spiteful, willful child_ — to clean the world in God’s name. John knew his Bible, knew his verse, yet he’d never seen it so interpreted.

All along the walls, the saints in the glass — tall and full of grace and alive, alive — stand regal and mournful, proud and gentle. If this were all John knew of Catholicism, he’d find it a lively sort of believing after all. As it is, he — he who has long since lost any faith held in God or man — feels penance on his tongue, heavy in his mouth and his heart. His hand, streaked with ash, grips the candle tighter, his palm clinging, sticky, and he takes a deep, shuddering breath. 

In his unfocused eyes, the vivid red of the windows stretches across the floor, across his body; across Finnegan, back to him, crumpled on the floor; across Hughes in his lap. 

He should have come with Moran alone. He knew — he suspected — John bites down, gritting his teeth. He had known nothing, suspected little beyond the race-fixing, and intuited none of Moran’s darker purposes. He’d been led to this like a naive child and had run when all was revealed. And Sherlock — Sherlock he had parted with after insignificant, petty words; jealousies, he can admit, a sick, uncertain envy about Sherlock’s histories and strange allegiances. Norbury burned and Sherlock disappeared, perhaps — perhaps dead, he forces himself to think, perhaps burned in the rubble of his long-standing house or his beloved laboratory. 

And John worse than fucking useless.

He lowers himself into one of the pews, shoving away his self-pity, his thoughts of Sherlock’s burning body, of Sherlock’s pained cries, of the fiery world outside awaiting him, alone. With his free hand, he pulls at his trousers, gritting his teeth against the peeling of cloth from torn flesh, and tears open the jagged rent in the fabric. Below, the blood eddies sluggishly from the bullet wound, clotting in heavy streaks down his knee and calf. He pulls a dirtied handkerchief from his pocket and presses it to the wound, then tugs loose his tie to wrap around his thigh and hold it in place. With each moment he’s seated, his body makes him more aware of the thudding of his pulse, the burn of his thigh, the pounding exhaustion which threatens his muscles. 

The urge to move, to push beyond those limits his body imposes, persists in the back corners of his mind, the spaces which remember trenches, and the push over the top. The slog through mud and the soldier’s minute, the chance to consider and the unrelenting choice to go on, to move. 

He could run. Everything he’s done for the Crown, for what? The Irish will get their Ireland, one way or another, they all know it’s inevitable. His gun at the chin of sneering boys; his rifle a sniper’s tool; his fingers twisted in a woman’s hair not in pleasure but cool anger. All to stop his men dying; and here they are, dead.

His heel scrapes against the stone floor; the edge of the pew is smooth under his palm. He stays still; his minute’s not up yet.

Inside the chapel, the air is broken only by John’s breath, the heavy stone walls creating an insular space, far from the raging world outside. In the silence, Moran’s words ring once more. _I’m only the instrument._ Which means Dublin, which means Sherlock’s mysterious bomb-maker, which means Sherlock in danger, if he’s still alive. Though he tries to think if there’s anything beyond hearsay he can use to implicate Moran, John cannot think past the itch of his gun hand, the rush of anger which spread through him as Hughes’s blood pulsed across his hands. 

If he can find proof of Moran’s treason, he could bring it to Smyth. But he has little faith in gaining justice from the Crown system. The system John is a part of, that he’s lied for again and again, that he’s killed for. Only John can tell the truth of the deaths of Finnegan and Hughes; Moran could just as easily counteract with a story of a rebel attack. Without some concrete evidence of seditious acts, Moran will be treated as little more than a cheat, a gambler, an unlucky soldier who manages to just escape ambush after ambush. Or — John’s stomach goes cold — he could turn his words around, paint John as the traitor, tie a noose of lies around his neck. 

He’ll have to die. What’s a little more blood on John’s hands, now?

Moran will still be tracking him; as a soldier, John knows this. With his injured leg, John won’t survive a sustained battle. Somehow, he needs to lure Moran in, needs to tempt him to confrontation in a way that will allow John to stay in control. He stands, tests his leg; after the brief respite, his muscles and nerves protest, sending sharp splinters of pain up his spine, dropping him back to the pew after only a few seconds. It’ll have to be here, then, for he’ll never survive another pursuit through the streets.

Scrubbing his hands through his hair, John looks around the small chapel once more. The weak candlelight barely penetrates the dark corners, its flickering light producing strange, monstrous shadows in the lurking depths. Bracing one hand on the pew, John hauls himself to his feet and makes his way to the wall. Thrusting the taper in front of him, he traces the walls with his hand as he surveys the perimeter, noting anything that could be used as a weapon: this heavy candelabra, that bible stand, the blunt granite edge of the font. The altar is bare but for an embroidered altar cloth; underneath is empty. 

From the altar, John walks down the steps back into the nave, testing the stability of the pews as he passes down the centre aisle. Dead ahead, St Patrick in his emerald robes offers a benediction, while down each side of the nave saints less familiar pass judgement. Pausing in the middle of the aisle, his eye is captured by a brilliant column of blue, its deep tones blending to amethyst in the fading light, which leads to an imperious face with a sharp, beaked nose. But for the long mass of crimson curls, the face, with the haughty set of its eyes and the thrusting, stubborn chin, could be familiar. Some forgotten ancestor of Sherlock’s, perhaps? Amused, John steps closer, craning his neck to examine the details, when his eye focuses and he frowns. 

Surrounding the figure, at feet and head, are sparkling, crimson bees, their wingspan the breadth of a man’s spread palm. In one hand, the figure holds a miniature of the chapel, formed from golden beeswax, and John is startlingly thrown back to the summer. To Sherlock’s outstretched thumb, coated in honey, to his caring hands on the hives. John’s laugh, when it breaks the silence, is hoarse, peculiar and cracked. Beekeepers, watching him.

Will he see that imperious gaze again? Straightening his shoulders, John pulls his hand away from the pew, stretches and fists it, tests his weight on his leg. It holds, though the pain remains. He reloads his Webley, checks the ammunition in his pouch, and holsters the gun. He gets two long strides down the aisle before the door shoves open, the entering figure a mere black silhouette against the darkening sky.

The door closes; John holds his candle aloft and reaches for his gun, but as the light falls on Moran he sees that the other man already has his drawn. Nothing separates them but a short stretch of stone floor.

“Confessing your sins?” Moran’s lip twists up sardonically. “Didn’t know you were Catholic.”

“Oh, just enjoying the scenery,” John answers breezily. “Why? Looking for salvation yourself?” He takes a cautious step forward; so does Moran. 

“I think we’re both past that, Watson.” 

John grinds his teeth together. “We’re not the same.”

A strange flicker — amusement, annoyance — passes over Moran’s face. “I’ve seen your work, Constable. And your association with the young Lord, well. He’s hardly working for the Crown, is he?”

John sniffs, doesn’t respond. His grip on the butt of his gun, still holstered, tightens. 

“Must have been quite a shock you had, seeing that old wreck burning. To find your _beloved_ gone.” He draws the word out, full of derision. John forces himself to breathe. 

“Was it you?” There’s some small measure of gratitude to be found in the steadiness of his voice, even while angry bile rises in his throat.

Moran laughs; full-bellied, hearty. “I helped. Pried up floorboards, laid down explosives. He’s a strange one, your lord. All those glasses and chemicals; they must have burned up prettily.” He watches John sharply; John keeps his face still. “Of course, if he has any sense in him, he’ll have taken what was offered him. The man I work for has plans far beyond this sad, pathetic little island.”

He’s alive. He’s — he must be alive. 

John can’t help a short, relieved exhale. Moran notices — he must — but doesn’t respond but for a slight jerk of his lip, a twitch to his bristled moustache. 

“The bomb-maker?” John says, casually. He takes a step closer. Moran’s eyes flick down to his feet, then back up. John lifts the candle higher. He hopes the tense way he holds his leg, and the hot, sticky rush of blood which started up again when he stood, are lost in the shadows.

“Amongst other things, yes, that’s him.”

“And he’s the one whose plans you follow? Whom you obey?”

Moran laughs again, sharp. “You’re not going to goad me, Watson. I don’t mind following when the mission’s worthwhile.”

“The mission?” John says derisively. “What was it you called it? Neatly applied chaos? That very fulfilling, is it?”

Moran shrugs casually and saunters a little closer, leaning in as though imparting a secret. “No. The money, though. You have no idea what those idiotic Americans will send back to the home country.” He sneers; in the half-instant in which his lip twists up, John thrusts his arm forward, shoving the flame of the candle into Moran’s face, and drops to one knee to avoid the man’s gunshot. The crack of the report rings parallel with the pain that explodes up his leg, and for a moment he thinks the bullet found him, before he remembers his injury.

Gun in hand, he aims up and fires without hesitation, all instinct against the darkness; there’s a strangled cry and a wet splatter across his face at the first shot, and the heavy, quaking fall of a man’s body at the second. He waits a beat, two, before scrambling to his feet and grappling for the extinguished candle. He stumbles across a pew to reach the bay of prayer votives, but before he can light the candle once more, a slice of light spreads across the floor as the door opens.

On the threshold stands a tall man, his long coat still rippling with movement, a familiar angular cant to his shoulders.

“My god,” John breaths out. “Sherlock.”

“John.” His name, too, is carried on an exhale, like John’s voice reminded Sherlock to breathe. Sherlock releases the door; it swings shut and they are swallowed in darkness again. John plunges the candle into one of the weak, flickering flames just as Sherlock scrapes lit a match. It catches his face — his beekeeper’s nose; his bruised mouth; his bloodied forehead — and John rushes forward. 

Sherlock’s match burns out just as John reaches him. Lifting his candle, John peers at him and feels something in his gut untwist and settle. “God, you’re — I thought you were dead.” One hand reaches, flutters near Sherlock’s temple, then drops to grasp the back of his neck. Sherlock exhales, head falling forward.

“I thought —” he starts, echoing John. “I feared I’d be too late.” His head shakes, the shorn hair at the nape of his neck scratching at John’s palm. 

“Are you hurt? How are you —” John’s hand moves to graze Sherlock’s cheek, to rub the dried blood away. Sherlock watches him.

John’s eyes must hold a question, so Sherlock answers: “Molly.” Looking down at the lump of Moran’s body next to their feet, Sherlock lifts an eyebrow. “You didn’t need my warning, I see.” There’s something heated in his voice, a heavy, liquid relief. 

“Don’t be cross,” John says, teasingly. “I’m sure you’re still very necessary.” Sherlock grins at him, still panting faintly. Their breath sends the candle flame dancing. John’s hand is still at the back of Sherlock’s neck. Under his thumb he can feel the skittering jump of his pulse; he digs the tips of his fingers in, watching the upward flick of Sherlock’s lashes, and pulls him down to crush their mouths together.

John’s lips are fire-dry and cracked; Sherlock’s mouth on them hurts, stinging little pains that have him pressing harder, until he can feel the bite-edge of Sherlock’s teeth. Their noses knock together; Sherlock’s hand scrabbles at his shoulder; John can’t breathe, doesn’t want to breathe. His mouth tastes of smoky ash and blood.

The candle dips precipitously close to John’s shoulder, and Sherlock shoves it away, out of his hand and clattering to the floor. John’s hand, tacky with sweat, flexes, fists, then curls around Sherlock’s elbow to pull him closer, their stumbling feet lurching together. John heaves a breath; Sherlock gasps; John ducks his head, forehead bumping against Sherlock’s chin. 

“It’s good that you’re — that you’re not dead.” John speaks to the hollow of Sherlock’s throat, bare in the narrow opening of his unbuttoned collar. When Sherlock laughs, a dry exhale against John’s temple, the skin under John’s lip trembles.

“I’m pleased,” he says, and John laughs, too. Under his hand, the wool of Sherlock’s coat is damp, and he feels strangely unwilling to release it. 

“I don’t know —” John says, to Sherlock’s unkempt collar. Sherlock’s shoulder jerks upward. 

“Me neither,” he says. His hand uncurls from John’s hip, slowly; John blinks at his shadowed form. As Sherlock turns away, though, his fingers grasp John’s wrist, clammy and too tight, and he pulls him toward the door. 

All remains quiet at the university, but as they descend the steps of the chapel and turn the corner to the gate, the burning city comes back into view.

They pause, together, at the top of the road. Flames dance and glint, reaching toward an ash-streaked sky. The river offers the only clear path through the fire, a black ribbon unspooling toward the lough. Sherlock’s hand remains clasped around John’s wrist, and he doesn’t shake it off. 

“What will you do now?” Sherlock stares ahead, face half in shadows, half illuminated by the eerie, raging glow of the flames. 

“Go back to London, I suppose.”

“You’re injured now. The army –”

“I’m not a soldier anymore,” John interrupts. Sherlock quiets. “I thought – maybe I’ll be a doctor.” The words feel a little desperate in his mouth, uncertain and tasting of blood, but once he’s said it, firm in the shifting air, they take shape, feel true.

Sherlock turns his head. Fire glints off his hair, in his eyes. “A doctor,” he says appraisingly, and nods.

John feels a shiver roll down his spine. “And you? Will you stay in Ireland?”

Sherlock takes one long look back at the chapel. “No,” he says. “I rather think London is my next port-of-call. I think I’ll be a consulting detective.”

“What?”

“Consulting detective. I’ll assist the police when they’re out of their depth. I should think I’ll have plenty of business.” Sherlock turns to John, their backs to the university, as before them spreads the blazing city; John thinks he can still feel its heat through the wool of his jacket, and his skin prickles. “How does that sound to you?”

John sighs, and smiles. “Mad.” Sherlock’s feet all over London’s sprawling streets; John’s uniform gone. 

Sherlock grins. His fingertips tighten around John’s wrist, cool on the thrumming of John’s pulse. “Good.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This week's clip:[Home from the Irish Front (1922)](http://youtu.be/tg2-T8Bu6TI)**
> 
> **1\. Surrounding the figure, at feet and head, are sparkling, crimson bees** Okay, so, the chapel of John and Moran’s last battle is a real place, and a pretty spectacular one at that. The Honan Chapel, located on the edges of the grounds of University College, Cork — then Queen’s College — was built in 1916 at the height of the Irish Arts  & Crafts/Celtic Revival movement. The design, decoration, and liturgical objects were all completed by Irish artists, including altar cloths and banners by the Dun Emer guild, a women-run crafts studio and press founded by Elizabeth and Lily Yeats, sisters to WB and Jack Yeats, and Evelyn Gleeson, and [stained glass windows](http://www.ucc.ie/services/honan/vrtour.php) designed by Harry Clarke and designers at An Túr Gloine, a stained glass cooperative studio founded by Sarah Purser and affiliated with a number of both female and male artists of the Celtic Revival. (Can you tell I’m interested in Irish women artists?)
> 
> The [beekeeper](http://www.harryclarke.net/honan_chapel_cork_st-gobnait.html) figure is St. Gobnait, a female saint local to County Cork, in a particularly striking Harry Clarke window. Gobnait is said to have taken up beekeeping in her later life, and in this window the bees act as protectors against those who would threaten her chapel. Clarke is known for his distinctive expressive, attenuated figures, his deft, finely figured details, and his use of dramatic, rich colours in both his stained glass and illustration. Poking around [harryclarke.net](http://www.harryclarke.net/index.html) would be well worth your time, and if you have a chance to see one of his windows in person, do!
> 
> * * *
> 
> And with that, we’re done. Some of you might have noticed that _Into the Dark Stream_ is now listed as Part 1 of the _Dark Stream_ series. I hope to be able to add side stories focusing on characters including Eva, Charlotte, and Molly. At this point I have no plans to revisit our boys past this work. If you’re interested in those side stories, please feel free to [subscribe to the series](http://archiveofourown.org/series/231066).
> 
> On that note, I want to give a final, very heartfelt, thank you to everyone who has been following along this past year, for your kudos and your comments and your encouragement, and to everyone reading this now for the first time! Huge, gigantic thanks again to Peninsulam for reading, editing, listening, chatting, advising, bolstering, cheerleading, and generally being the best writing friend I could hope for.


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